Kingdom Hearts: Memorial
by zergvsgenin
Summary: NOTE: Read "Artifice" first!  Roman, number XV.  Eve, number XVI.  A heart will warp one, memories will revive the other.  Both are intertwined by fate...  Shonen JUMP x Square Enix - OC x teen!Eve
1. False Unconnections

"Hm hm hm… deer poop… hm hm hm…"

The orange haired girl continued walking down the sidewalk. It was awfully inactive on the streets for this particular time of day. Usually, there would be more than one car passing by, but it seemed like no one was interested in getting anywhere anytime soon today. She hummed her little song that would offend most others, chewing up a piece of jerky bit by bit as she went. She kept her parasol out and above her head, like all Yato did when the sun was out. Too much sun would tend to burn their skin, because unlike most humans, theirs was rather transparent. However, she wouldn't need it for that purpose for much longer for the remainder of that day.

It began to rain. Softly, but it still rained. Luckily, the Yato weren't stupid enough to try making their parasols JUST for keeping the sun off their skin. They had to fight with them as well, so they had to make them of sturdy materials, fabric and all. As it turns out, such material also had practical uses, such as now. The girl kept humming for a while before stopping. Something felt… wrong. She didn't know what it was. The rain seemed… sad. "Sad rain? That shouldn't happen…" she said aloud, having stopped eating the jerky.

She had heard the legends. Sometimes, tragedies in one reality affect others. She thought about it for a moment. [Did something happen? Something sad happened? I remember when I…]

She broke with her train of thought upon remembering her pet. She clenched a hand close to her chest, not wanting to remember it again. She loved that rabbit so much, yet her strength was too much for it. [Something or someone must have died!] she realized.

With this realization, she gasped and looked up to the grey heavens…

* * *

Kagura was slow to wake from her slumber on the mat. "Ngh… Minatsuki-san? Minatsuki-san?" she called out sleepily and with little regard as to what it was she was saying.

She slid the door open and stepped onto the main sitting area of the Odd Jobs apartment. Save for the soft sound of the rain, and the soft and barely audible breathing of Sadaharu, the apartment was dead silent. Gintoki wasn't even snoring. To make sure nothing was wrong, Kagura, slid open the door leading to Gintoki's room. It turned out the doors were thicker than she had always known them, because she was met by Gintoki's moderate snoring almost immediately, so she quickly shut the door. Kagura then walked to the front door and walked out, not bothering with her shoes at this time.

The rain felt really familiar. A soft rain. A sad rain, of sorts. The streets barely had any activity, as well. "So it happens here in Edo, too."

[But what could have happened?] she wondered to herself.

She looked up to the grey sky, hoping for an answer…

* * *

She could barely breathe properly. The stab wounds and few gunshot wounds certainly weren't helping her case. She kept a hand to her side to stop the bleeding of her side, where she was hit the hardest. Her vision blurred as the rain fell softly on the alley, washing her blood down it. She turned to her left and saw a figure at the end of the alley. It took a few steps before it stumbled into a garbage can, its resulting clangs echoing throughout the alley. Littered throughout were helmets and broken swords, to say nothing of the bodies of the owners. She never expected the man to bring a fighting force to bring him back.

The figure drew closer. It became more familiar. The hair, the black coat. The number XIII on his body. When he reached her, he collapsed onto his knees, dropping his gun onto the wet ground. "S-Saya…"

She struggled to acknowledge him. Train's yellow eyes looked into Saya's green ones, the light fading from them. Moving only caused more blood to come from her wounds, staining her yukata further. Still, she smiled at him. "Are you… okay?" she asked him, weakly coughing at the end.

"Yeah… he's gone. Somehow."

"That's good."

She wanted to reach over to him from the wall, but it caused her immense pain to do so. She couldn't use her free hand, her left, or the one she was using to hold her side. "It's good that… you're going to live."

"Huh?" Train said, his pupils contracting a little.

Saya slowly reached over to put her hand behind Train's head. At this point, pain didn't matter. It didn't seem like she was going to recover from this. She pulled his face to herself, letting her right hand drop from her side. The act covered half of his face in her blood, along with some of it getting in his hair. "You… you're special. I can see you as a free man. A cat that... follows no orders. Yet… the Black Cat is dead, in what I see," she said.

She let go, letting her hand drop and hit the wall behind her and Train pulled back slowly, trying to register what was going on. He didn't try to wipe the blood off. He was too dazed at the moment. "The Black Cat needs to die… but something has to take its place," she continued, slowly picking up Hades and handing to Train.

She was slow to do this, because she could feel the strength fading from her arms. Her legs. Her entire body was starting to go numb. "A stray cat."

Train inched closer to take the weapon from her. She placed it in his hands, pushing his hand a little after letting it go. Her hand fell onto a pool of her blood that had now formed on the ground. "For the Black Cat to die… and to come back a stray…" Train said slowly.

He had Hades in both hands now. It seemed to weigh so much more now. To him, perhaps it was her blood. She gave him a smile as her eyes closed. She slid down the wall to her left slowly, as if though setting down to rest. He watched her do so, not even blinking once. "Saya…"

"Don't… be bound… by chains. The only chains you keep… are… memories…"

After exhaling a silent breath, she stopped breathing. Train eyes went wide. He crawled on all fours to her, sitting himself up again to reach out and touch her face. The smile was gone. Some of the blood on his face had washed away. His hand trembled as he gasped at the realization he had made. She was gone.

Creed took her.

He could hear his voice in his head. _She poisoned you, Train! But I'm saving you! I'm saving you from destruction! Chronos is the only place you can exist!_

Train screamed into the heavens. He found that he couldn't move afterwards. He looked into the rainclouds, visions of Saya flowing into his mind…

* * *

"You know…" Kagura said, holding a cup of Rinoa's tea.

"Rinoa's tea doesn't suck?" Gintoki said. "I mean it. This is some good stuff."

"No… there was this woman I knew when I was younger. She was around before, while and after I had Sadaharu number one. She wore a really pretty yukata from what I remember."

"Do you remember her name?" Rinoa asked, setting the tea tray down and taking a seat next to Gintoki. "And why did you decide to bring this up?"

"All I remember is Minatsuki-san. I can't remember her first name. And… the rain… that's why I brought it up."

Gintoki finished off his tea with one sip. "Anything important about her we should know?"

Kagura looked up to think. "She was really nice to me. She was the one who taught me some things about rabbits, where they live in the wild around Earth, and was the one who suggested Sadaharu to me in the first place. The pestering of my parents, I did myself."

"And here comes the accent-less nostalgia," Gintoki said, putting a leg up and moving his head back and up.

"When I had Sadaharu number one, she would frequently go somewhere and buy a bag of bunny treats. I never tried them myself, obviously, but he absolutely loved them. When I lost Sadaharu, she did her best to make it better by finding a plush bunny," Kagura began, holding up said toy rabbit.

The rabbit was in surprisingly good condition. One would never suspect that she squeezed the poor thing as hard as she could when she had a nightmare. "One day, she left a note on my bedroom window. She wrote that she wouldn't be able to come back again, because she came to do something, and she got it done. She also wrote that she had a certain someone to visit, or that he would visit her. That was a really long time ago…"

"So that settles it. She's never coming back. Even so, this is before you moved to Edo, right?" Gintoki asked, picking his nose.

"Yeah, but I've lived on Earth longer than I've been in Edo! Oh, and one more thing… she mentioned being a Wandering Sweeper… maybe she was hired to clean up a pop idol's mess after her biggest concert?"

"I highly doubt that," Rinoa said.

* * *

"Hey, dudes…" Roman asked when entering the Grey Area. "Who discovered Sweeper's Field, and how'd it get its name?"

"That would be me," Vexen called out from the opposite side of the room. "I did not name the world, however. If memory serves, the name is derived from one of the world's chief occupations, bounty hunters."

"So what, they 'sweep' crime out of cities?" Roman said, making little sweeping motions with his hand.

"What else?" Xigbar asked. "It's 'Sweeper's Field', not 'Hunter's Field'."

"Eh, I can live with it."

No sign of Eve in the Area just yet. [Probably getting a leave for what happened yesterday,] Roman thought. [Odd, considering it was after the mission. She's not vulnerable to fat and sugar, is she?]

Roman walked over to Xion, who was looking out the window and at Kingdom Hearts. "Did you get to see Eve on your way here?" Roman asked.

Xion turned and said, "Yeah. She looked fine, but she confided herself to bed when I checked."

"Well, I hope that she' s up for another mission at some point."

"Agreed."

After talking to Xion, Roman decided to talk to the man in red. He still had his hands in his pockets, and his eyes were still obscured by his cap and hood. "…Yeah, store's open," he said.

"What now?"

"You got the money or other stuff, I got the good stuff."

Roman contemplated it for a second, but dismissed it, and walked over to Saix. His stare was as cold as ever, and pushing him out of Eve's room didn't seem to help it any. Without so much as a word, Roman was handed the mission specs of the day.

[Cold as always,] Roman thought. [Just wait, he's gonna ask me at some point when I'm here…]

But while Roman waited, he opened the mission specs. These were… interesting. It seemed like an entire list of missions to him. Roman made an O of his mouth as he scanned the paper. It didn't seem like there was any further detail to any of them. Another bout of curiosity was brought up when Roman's eyes went up to the top of the paper. "Weekly mission list?" he said aloud.

"The Organization is conducting an… experiment in which you get to be the main test subject," Saix said. "Unless the plan is dispelled for any reason, we are allowing members to visit other worlds freely at their leisure, for training and/or investigation of something of interest. Look at the mission at the top of the list."

Roman looked at just there. The mission so far was simply entitled Find Xaldin. [What, did the dude somehow get himself lost in a world?] Roman thought. [Emphasis on somehow.]

"High priority missions are marked accordingly," Saix continued. "Be sure to clear the list before the end of the week."

Of the four missions, Roman figured in his head that, if need be, he could dedicate a maximum of two days per mission to get them done before week's end. "One more note," Saix started again. "Be back by one o'clock AM, our timeframe, each night. That means bringing your watch."

[Hmph. A sort of curfew?] Roman thought.

He took a closer look at the mission list of the week. There was Find Xaldin, Collect Hearts, another Collect Hearts and Gather Emblems. [Oh no,] Roman thought when he saw the last mission listed. [I hate those stupid emblems. Who puts them where they tend to end up, anyway!]

Directly underneath each mission was the world in which the mission would take place. In order, Youkai Academy [Investigating that energy source again?], Sweeper's Field, Innocent Europe, and a new entry, Huffman Island.

Roman scanned over those two words again to make sure he wasn't seeing anything. Huffman Island. He opened his mouth to ask, but said nothing to Saix. He figured he'd leave it for last, and do the heart missions first, as they catered to his drive more than other mission types. He put the paper in his pocket and opened his mouth to tell Saix of his decision when the dark corridor caught his eye off to his right. On top of that, Saix had left, being sighted at the doorway before Roman turned to the corridor again. "Uh... yeah. Hey, Xion?"

She turned to face him. "You think it'd be okay if we work together on something?" Roman asked.

"Are you sure?" Xion asked back, walking to Roman. "Saix didn't say that we could complete missions together, did he?"

"Hell, I got no clue. Besides, what he doesn't know won't neccessarily hurt him, will it?"

Xion's gaze fell to the ground. "I guess not..."

"Then let's see," Roman said with a smile, entering the corridor.

Several white portals were now littered fairly close by in the dark space. It seemed that Saix wasn't kidding about letting members go where they want, since the white portals in the dark space led to other worlds. Looking closely, one could approximately tell which world each light portal led to, though where they end up specifically may vary. It took a little while for Roman and Xion to find the portal to Sweeper's Field, where Roman decided to head to open the week's missions. It was signified in the swirling light as a small patch of land with a sort of town or city on it. A hill taller than the rest of it had a disproportionally huge car on top with a black cat riding in it. This image is that of Sweeper's Field.

"Now, what kind of creator makes worlds like THAT on the outside?" Roman asked, as he and Xion stood in front of the portal.

"That's a good question. They look almost nothing like that in the worlds themselves."

"Oh, reality. Why must you fuck with us so?"

* * *

The scenery rushed past quickly. There was barely any time for one on top of the train to get a decent bearing of what it all was. If they could, they would see the brick buildings, some of which had the light coming out of the windows. On one of the cars, someone overhead would have seen a figure crouched on top of it. He wore blue, with a white shirt underneath it. He held his gun up near his face, the barrel pointed upwards, and closed his eyes for a moment before holstering the gun. He opened his eyes slowly and raised his head as well, to get a view of what was ahead. In all this, he also managed to bring a smile to his own face.

[My name is Train Heartnet,] he thought, slowly standing up and putting hands into his pockets. [I was the Black Cat. But he's dead now. What you're looking at is a stray cat. A stray that follows no orders, cleaning up the streets as a sweeper. I'm no SOLDIER... but I come pretty darn close, wouldn't you say?]

The train sped towards its destination, the former Black Cat standing tall with a smile on his face on top...

* * *

[Author's Notes]

- Yes. I did it. Train and Saya are the new Cloud and Zack, respectively. And I should remind you that there is no Midgar.

- Next chapter's the Collect Hearts mission in Sweeper's Field, "The Sweepers." I can tell you that my monkey main from Dissidia is a big asset in this world.


	2. Sweepers

Neither Roman nor Xion could get a good view of the green-haired man sort of hunched over in surprise. They were hidden in the shadows of a nearby alley, and crouched behind garbage cans. Still, they could tell that he wasn't exactly pleased with whatever it was he was seeing on top of the train. "What the HELL! ?" the man suddenly shouted.

Someone jumped down from the top of the train on his feet without stumbling. [Props, dude,] Roman thought. [Major props.]

The new face didn't seem older than the green-hair in the white business attire. By Roman's reckoning, the newcomer didn't seem much older than himself, maybe older by three years, tops. He wore blue garments with a white shirt underneath the coat, which had its sleeves rolled up just below the elbow. Both Nobodies caught sight of a Roman numeral on the newcomer's chest. The number thirteen. "That dude," Roman whispered to Xion. "Saw a similar number on a gun. And a rain poncho."

"Maybe it's just a fashion thing," Xion replied.

"I doubt that," Roman said as the older man fumed. "Let's re-note that thirteen is unlucky as all hell, so who'd want bad luck going wherever they go?"

"Rebels?"

"Look, I know that the security on the train was tight," the man said to the younger one, "But did you really have to STAND on top of it?"

The younger guy scratched the back of his chocolate-colored hair and laughed as he replied, "Well, it doesn't call for a pun on my name, right? Besides, you know me. I would have ducked at low tunnels or anything like that."

"Right… anyway, I can't believe we actually have to go to the same city twice for any reason," the older man said. "Guess there's no letting down a high-pay target," he added, taking a piece of paper out.

The Nobodies had a decent view of this particular article. It looked like a wanted poster with a reward. The subject had no hair save for eyebrows, and his face suggested smugness and superiority. "Odie Oldbright. Professional fighter in the underground circuit, but suspected of murdering some of his opponents when there are no spectators present," the older man said.

"Well, Sven, looks like we got the upper hand," the younger guy said. "If he likes fights without spectators, we can catch him in a fight without rules, and…" he took out an intricate looking gun from a holster on his thigh. The numerals for thirteen shone in the moonlight, right into Roman's face. "Hades here can probably take care of the rest, if need be."

Xion took notice of the gun as well. "Thirteen… it's like the one on his chest."

"Oh dude…" Roman muttered. "It's probably the same guy."

"Where are his usual haunts?" the younger guy asked the green haired man.

"All the authorities know is that he's in this city, but the real question is where specifically," Sven (by Roman's reckoning) said. "If someone is killed, we look for him."

Starting off to the Nobodies' right, the younger one walked off with his hands behind his head. "Well, we better get moving then, Svenny-baby!"

"Hey! I'm your partner, not 'Svenny-baby'!" Sven said as he turned to follow the other.

When they were far enough away, the Nobodies came out from the dark alley and stood with their hoods up, the darkness obscuring their facial features. Xion was the exception, with her mouth showing for some reason. "That nickname is just so very gay…" Roman commented.

"I concur, but they're not who we're after, right?"

Roman only gave a grunt of agreement. Just then, three Soldiers appeared in front of them. "Well, any start is better than dead-nothing," Roman said.

One Soldier was grabbed by Roman and tossed into the air. As it came down, Xion smacked it with her Keyblade, propelling it into a second. Neither were destroyed by the act, but knocked into the alley instead, crashing into several trash cans. The two pursued the dazed Heartless while the third Soldier looked to its left, enjoying the prospect of unsuspecting prey instead.

The Soldiers smacked into the alley were dazed by the impacts, making them pathetically easy targets for Roman's foot as he charged into one with a forward kick followed by an uppercut, and an upwards vertical strike from Xion into another, knocking it into the air along with the other. The both of them were close enough that Roman ran forward as he saw them descend to earth headfirst. He jumped and kicked out both legs in front of him, kicking both Soldiers squarely in the back of their heads, sending them careening out the other end of the alley. The aftermath of the event was Roman falling on his back.

Roman wheeled around to catch sight of the remaining Soldier, who began a run to the right. Roman started down the alley, but stopped when two gunshots rang out. The sound of a destroyed Heartless followed, along with a heart rising to the sky. Roman and Xion remained frozen to their positions for a moment, waiting for anything else. Nothing. The two of them eased into neutral positions. "Didn't think he could do that…" Roman said.

"Does that count as one of ours?" Xion asked.

Roman dug into his robe pocket for the mission tracking device. The bar at the top filled up a small bit, answering the girl's question. "Weird," Roman added.

* * *

[So… Odie Oldbright…] Zidane thought as he walked the streets of the city. [Murderous fighter? That can't be legal, especially by official tournament rules.]

On his way, he passed the spot where the road had been cracked and heavily damaged and burnt. Authorities were baffled as to how this could have happened. Experts said that arsonists would have burnt other things, not just the road and some street lamps. Zidane had a better explanation, and one that should have been explained over the news, given the situation of the recent years. The shadow creatures. They could certainly do that sort of thing.

Zidane Tribal didn't have much specific knowledge of them, but then again, who did? They appear, kill or be killed, and if they survived, disappear. To him, there wasn't much else. A simple little pattern.

His tail swished back and forth, barely missing other pedestrians on the way. He had taken the sweeping job since he managed to blow the money from the previous week's "earnings" on food and a three day stay at a hotel. Besides, a guy like this, and two certain somebodies would probably roll by to help him out. Yes, they would have to split the bounty, but that's having friends like the deadliest assassin on the planet and a former detective.

He smiled at the thought, which was broken by a yawn. [Crap…] he thought. [My hotel stay expired this afternoon, so I'll have to find some abandoned apartment or something, fast!]

He scanned the windows of the buildings on both sides of the road. Anyone home? Any boarded up windows? Any—[Whoa, what the?]

On the rooftops on the opposite side of the road, shadowy figures ran on top. They had no sort of formal gait, and they would have blended in completely with the night sky were it not for the glowing yellow circles. Some of them were higher than others. [Oh, man…}

He looked left, right, then left again before crossing. He couldn't just climb the buildings from the front or else he might be suspected of God knows what, so he had to hoof it into an alley, and climb up from there. Rather than use the ladders and stairs, Zidane had a far more unique and quick way to get up; running up the wall. He called this Quickmovement, which is rather appropriate for the situation. When he got up on the rooftops, shadow creatures appeared in a circle around him. Five of them, and they all looked like yellow bells of sorts with little stick legs barely visible. The original forces turned to look at the intruder of their work. "Heh, tonight's victims…" focusing energy to his hands, two large knife-swords appeared in his hands. He held them both with reverse grips. "Are you!"

* * *

"Hey, get this!" Roman said to Xion.

They had moved to a fountain plaza where the only ones there were them, so they saw no reason to keep their hoods on. "What is it?"

"I dunno, but the mission gauge looks like it's going up on its own!"

Xion looked in amazement as the small bar gradually filled up. To this moment, they had taken the bar by themselves to half capacity, following the areas they could go to. "Is there, like, EMP or something?" Roman asked. "No, wait, that would fry this thing altogether."

"I thought it was 'emp.'"

"Let's not even go there right now," Roman said. "I insult your body, so I don't need to insult anything else, frankly."

"Well, excuse ME," Xion said, indignant, briefly putting her hands to her sides at the last syllable.

"If it's gonna do this, we may as well get our free time now, and explore what we can of the place."

"Are you sure?"

Roman flashed a smile and a thumbs-up. "You kidding? I wanna see if this is the same city from my previous scraps here."

Xion nodded in assent as they went on their ways again. From afar…

* * *

"Previous scraps?" Train asked.

"You went out of the apartment without me knowing again?" Sven asked.

"Well, some weeks ago, I think," the Black Cat replied, shrugging with a cat-like facial expression. The only things missing were cat ears.

The sweepers moved onto the fountain plaza where the robed teens were. Of the two, only one had their hood on, and that was the girl. The boy wore glasses in front of his brown irises. The girl's features were obscured by her hood, save for her mouth for some odd reason. "Maybe they're siblings in a local gang," Train said. "You know, that same few weeks ago, some people mistook me for one of their own, I think."

Sven was inches away from lighting another cigarette. "The way they left though… that's not something Chronos had when I was around," Train added.

"Time's passed," Sven said, lighting the cigarette. "You don't know what you've missed in their technology department, and neither do I."

"They wore the same robes. I think I recognize the boy, but the girl is a new face… that is, if I could have seen it. Anyway, they said something about a mission bar and it filling on its own."

"So they're here on assignment…"

"Makes me wonder what it is, though," Train said, lying on his back on the edge of the fountain, with his left side near the water. "Maybe they're just sweepers like us."

"Yup. All three of us," a new voice called out.

Train sat up to see a familiar dark-clothed boy with a tail. "Hey, Zidane! How's it going, buddy?" he called out, waving to the boy.

Zidane waved back, saying, "Ah, I just blew nearly all of my money on food and shelter, so I'm sweeping someone until I can find some farts to steal from."

Sven wasn't particularly fond of Zidane's presence. He never stole anything of his or Train's, but he knew well that they boy could very well get away with it 40% of the time. A high amount considering who Zidane would be stealing from. "You know," Train said. "You could just roll some of those creatures for cash. I hear that some of them are loaded with munny which you can use anywhere unlike regional currency!"

"Who uses 'roll' like that anymore?" Sven asked.

Zidane smiled and said, "Well, if not you, then—"

Irate, Sven didn't give Zidane a chance to finish his sentence. "Hey, I'm not old! I'm just older than either of you!"

"Then that proves it, you're old."

Sven's unpatched eye twitched.

* * *

"New arms dealer on the rise; Planned trades with Torneo Rudman?" Roman read from a newspaper aloud. "Uh… okay."

"I feel really nervous, being out in the open like this…" Xion said, sitting on the opposite side of the wall corner.

Roman moved so that he was looking around the corner at her. "It's the timefuck, isn't it? Here, it's…" Roman fiddled with his watch. "10:21. But at the castle, it's… 1:59. PM."

"I guess, but still…"

"Hey, it's a city! Hopefully, they see enough strange crap to not give a damn. Of course, that probably puts them at risk of Heartless-rape, but whatever."

Roman took the mission tracker out of his pocket. The mission bar, unfortunately, stopped its automatic filling. However, at that time, Heartless started to practically come to them, even this moment, as a Yellow Opera materializes only to be hit by a truck not even ten seconds later. "Wow. Looks like we only need to be here for the kills to count. Oops, wait a second."

A Shadow managed to start coming out of the ground, making Roman's foot rise. In response, he crushed it with his weight. "There we go."

He straightened out the paper and continued reading.

Rising arms dealing star Kuja is being known for his unique creations and modifications to nanotechnology, as well as making them controllable outside a body. In other fields, he is making a name for himself in the classical music fields, as well as top ranks in mid-level theatrics. [An arms dealer, a composer, and an actor?] Roman thought. [That's a complicated living job right there. How'd the journalists find this out, anyway, and who the hell is Torneo Rudman?]

He turned the pages, crushing another Shadow underneath his left foot. Rumors have it that Kuja is trading research with Rudman. Kuja will work to refine the workings of nanomachines in living beings, while Rudman will learn of control outside a body. Only now did Roman notice the name of the paper. Sweeper Weekly.

[No wonder they're so chock full of odd news,] Roman thought. [It's to help build a rap sheet for these sorts of bastards.]

"Well, I think I've read enough," Roman announced, letting the paper fly in the wind. "Let's roll and find the last few Heartless."

Xion stood up and brushed herself off. As per common sense, Roman looked both ways before crossing the street. One Bad Dog, however, was not so smart, and was subsequently crushed by a minivan. As the Nobodies went into the last accessible area in the city, they saw it to be a familiar sight. At least, Roman did. "Oh fuck, they STILL haven't cleaned the place up entirely?"

"What did you do?" Xion asked.

"It was that surprise attack from, like, a few weeks ago?" Roman replied. "I didn't expect it to do so much damage, really. I told you and Roxas already, didn't I?"

Xion looked on at the scene as law enforcement tape barred the public from getting too close. Three in particular stood out. "Hey, there's the young guy, the older guy and… is that a tail?"

Roman was momentarily distracted by two girls holding each other especially close. "I'm sorry, what? Oh, those dudes." Roman squinted to get a better look. "There's… Train? One of them mentioned a name pun earlier. And then… eh…"

Roman seemed to be struggling to find the right word. "Fur…ry?"

Xion turned and gave him a quizzical look. "It's only a tail."

"I have no other material. I'm stuck. Ooh, oh shit!"

* * *

"More of these stupid things?" Zidane asked, jumping over the tape.

This new creature looked like a large ball with armor and limbs. Zidane's knife-swords bounced right off the creature's belly, leaving him open to be hit twice by massive swinging fists. Train jumped nimbly over its head as Sven opened fire on it. Even bullets bounced right off, prompting nearby civilians to panic and run. However, Train had different luck. His bullets, fired at its back, stuck. It turned to face him, bowling over Sven with its girth. Train opened fire again, but no luck. Seeing the bullet holes, Zidane took the opportunity to jam both his knife-swords into its back, holding on as it attempted to shake him off. By the time he did lose his grip, it was too late for the creature; Train had jumped onto it, and shot point-blank into its head. It jerked four times, once per bullet, and stood still, its mouth open as if dumbfounded.

Train jumped off as lightly as he did at the train station as the creature fell onto some of the rubble, flattening it. When the dust settled, only Zidane's weapons remained of it. "Sheesh… some fat," Train commented.

* * *

Roman gave the combatants an open jaw, incredulous stare. The three of them, without Keyblades, took down a Large Body. "The competition is really high in this universe," Roman said after a moment of silence from him.

He looked to his side and expected to see Xion, but there was no such luck. He turned around to see her making a run for the dark corridor. "Thanks…" Roman said silently as he walked after her.

In the dark space between worlds, Roman checked his watch again. 2:31 PM. Not too bad. He lost track of when the fight started, but he gauged it to be abound 2:29. It would take him by himself about a minute and a half. They took one down in just two. [Well, strength in numbers.]

He was tempted to walk into another world before returning to the Castle, but he merely took a look at some of them. He had decided that the next mission would be to go ahead and find Xaldin, so he should at least get an idea of what Youkai Academy looked from the portal's view.

Roman saw a small sort of school building seemingly built around a cross that practically towered over it. Looking closely, he also caught sight of bats flying around. [What a weird reality we got,] he thought.

Apparently, it seemed that there were usual loafer shifts in the castle. Lexaeus, Zexion and Marluxia ("pretty boy") were the ones sitting around, along with the man in red. Again, Saix was nowhere to be found.

[Shouldn't he be a preemptive lid to chaos?] Roman thought. [Not that we Nobodies can reasonably cause it, I'm just wondering.]

He walked past the man in red and to the member commons. Roxas wasn't there, so it was safe to assume he was on a mission. Xion wasn't there either, which confused Roman. She was the one who beat him there. [Eve, maybe?]

His expectation was right on the mark. Xion was in Eve's room checking on her resting form. To Roman's dismay, so was Vexen, who was taking notes. He mouthed "pedo" and pointed to Vexen's head. Looking at his notes over his shoulder, Roman saw some odd things.

* * *

Day one of testing has gone well… until after the mission. When I get a chance, I must check her food allergies, if she has any. Perhaps it was a mistake to make a "meat puppet," as some would put it?

On another note, she exhibited the ability to shift her hands into weapons she has a strong mental image of. So far, I have matched that which she used to diagrams, illustrations and pictures in the books Zexion said she read. Fascinating thing, she is.

* * *

Roman almost audibly said, "What?"

Xion motioned for him to follow her out of the room as Eve stirred. However, he couldn't tear away so easily. Even as he moved out, his eyes remained fixated on Eve's resting face and figure. It took a slap from Xion to take his eyes off of her.

* * *

[Author's Notes]

- Next chapter: Awake Again. This takes up Eve's POV, and details the mission in Innocent Europe. Did I mention that Golbez is a rather unique Exorcist here?

- Zidane's appearance in Memorial is based on his alternate color in Dissidia. Personally, I think it fits him better.

- A lot of these cuts to the world's natives are usually parts where you would be playing through. I'd imagine them as cutscenes that would play out when you enter a particular area.

- In case anyone is a little sensitive of the overuse of the F word here, it won't be present if this were an actual game.


	3. Awake Again

"And so, the night becomes day…"

An armored giant stood alone in front of a long-defunct fountain. The purples and blacks of his armor shone in the rising sun as it rose from the east, giving the giant his sense of direction again. He had just finished up dealing with some akuma, though his armor nor his hands wouldn't show the damage. The only evidence he would leave would be the impact marks upon the stone ground. "So where am I left in this?" he questioned himself, turning away from the light.

"My heart is shrouded in the darkness, yet I combat it externally in the form of the akuma and these…" he paused. "Other creatures. Is there redemption for the likes of me?"

A gunshot. The bullet ricochets off the left shoulder of the armor without leaving a scratch. The man turns his head to look at the place of impact, actually have difficulty finding the spot due to the lack of damage. Another gunshot, another ricochet, this time off the left arm. The man turned to face his shooter.

He was met by the sight of a grotesque sort of ball with cannons coming jutting out every whichway, with a tortured face staring right at him, roaring primitively as more bullets spewed from the cannons at the man. Nearly every bullet met their mark, but left none. He then started to walk towards the creature as if though her were casually walking down the road as bullets pinged and clanged against his armor. No akuma was ever able to penetrate it in his lifetime. In a brief encounter with the Earl, he himself had a spot of difficulty finding a weakness. "So a beast such as yourself found courage," the man yelled over the sound of gunfire and bullets.

The akuma stopped. It seemed to consider the word as an orb of dark energy built up between the man's two hands. "Too much…"

The energy was released, embedding itself in the akuma's face before fading moments later. Where its face was, a crater stood in its place as purple flames enveloped it on its way down. "Too late."

The akuma crashed to the ground with a loud crash, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust that had been lying on the ground. When the dust settled, a human would have seen only another crater, the same size as the others on the ground. The man saw a freed soul rising to the heavens. A soul liberated of the fate of becoming a manifestation of shadow. She waved at the man happily with a wide smile, thanking him for freeing her. "To lose your life at a tender age like that… they are better off with my fate."

* * *

_Hey… are you…?_

Who…

_I'm a heart. Not too long ago, I became what I am. Can you open your eyes?_

No…

_Why? Is it because it's so empty in here? Is that it? Since I got here, I took a look around, and that probably messed with you a little._

_I never thought a body could exist like this without a heart. Or is yours broken?_

Heart… broke…

_You sound unsure about the sounds of those words. I've listened to you for a few days. What you said then, they're mainly just… imitations of other people. Like you have nothing of your own._

No…thing…nothing…

_That boy you've seen. That's actually why I'm here. He can't uphold his end of the promise because… of what happened. So… I have to hold mine. Maybe then, he'll pick up on his end again._

_Take me in. No one should exist without a heart. No one…_

* * *

_Five minutes before the set alarm_, Eve thought as she sat up.

She had soundlessly woken up from what she would describe as a vivid dream. First, she had a sort falling sensation. She was sleeping in the dream, so there was no telling how high up she originally was. Then, she felt herself slow down gently, like propping herself up underwater (if she knew the feeling proper). That's when she started to wake up in the dream. She soon realized that there was no way to gauge how far down she went anyway, because the entire area was pitch black, save for herself. When she touched down on her two feet, she found herself on a glowing white platform, which seemed to be assembling slowly from its center outwards. Throughout the dream, there was a voice. A girl's voice. She didn't know where it came from, especially when she was falling. It struggled when the platform was being assembled shard by shard, like it was struggling for something.

The last words she remembered were, "Remember him for me," before the platform emitted a blinding white light, causing Eve to squeeze her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she was in bed.

She moved the blanket off and held the clock in her hands on her lap, the clockface staring up at her, ticking the seconds away from its alarm at 8. It was 7:57 now. She still wore her dress from the days before, sans the arm warmer which made a heap of itself on the nightstand behind where the clock once was. When the clock rang, she didn't flinch. She merely stopped it and placed it back where it was, grabbing her arm warmer afterwards.

At the mirror next to the window, she checked her hair. Long, blonde and straight as it had been for the past week or so. A memory of it moving of its own accord came back to her. She was also staring into a mirror at the time, though she was in less clothing and in her underwear. She wondered how she did it, trying to goad it into moving by picking out a section and shaking it a bit before giving up with a small huff. _Perhaps…_

She visualized a hammer she had seen a book before, during her week of reading. She made the blades and shield of her hands in such a manner, so it made sense to her that she could also manipulate her hair. Taking another section, she concentrated on the image of the hammer, and her hair shifted. It spiraled and melded, making a unified surface and grew. Soon, Eve found herself holding a golden replica of the hammer with one hand. She was curious as to how light it was, nearly hitting the dresser in the process… and a Nobody on their way in when she turned at the sound of their greeting. "Where did you get that?" Roxas asked.

"This?" Eve asked.

She let go of it and let it fall to the ground with a thud. From the bottom of the handle were strands of her hair which led up to her head, yet when Roxas did a test swing at it with the Keyblade, it was a solid as could be. "Holy crap…" he said to himself.

Eve gave Roxas a curious head tilt. "Oh, sorry," he quickly said. "I figured that you'd hear that out of Roman's mouth. So I can guess that you're okay?"

"Yes…" Eve replied, reverting the hammer back to her own hair.

"Does your head feel okay? Your chest?"

She furrowed her brow slightly at the questions. "What?" Roxas said. "D-Did I offend you?"

"No… what are you talking about?" Eve said.

Roxas scratched his head, trying to think of what to say. "Uh… well, yesterday, you seemed like something was seriously wrong with your head, then your chest…"

"Anatomical heart," Roman said, suddenly popping his head into the room. "What we lack in spirit, we make up for in anatomy."

"Um… what?"

"Nevermind," Roman said, moving out of sight again. "Catch y'all in the Grey Area!"

[I wonder why he didn't ask Eve anything,] Roxas thought.

* * *

"So you think we should tell Saix the next chance we get?" Roman asked. "You know, about the Sweepers wiping out Heartless for us?"

Xion thought about it for a moment. "I don't know… I mean, they didn't really know about us, did they?"

"It's that, 'I'm being watched' feeling, isn't it? Listen, I get that myself, but then it goes away after a little bit."

The Grey Area today was populated by Roman, Xion, Vexen and the usual man in red. Joining them as Roman finished his statement were Roxas and Eve. "Hey, Roxas," Roman called out, walking towards him. "Need your opinion here."

Eve walked past the Nobody boys and over to Xion. She had a notion in the back of her head to ask her something from some days back that seemed somewhat blurred, but she decided to ask anyway. "About you and Roman…" she asked.

"Huh?" Xion gave Eve a confused look. "What about us?"

The blonde girl closed her eyes in thought, trying to remember the query she initially had. Opening her eyes, she asked, "How much does he talk?"

"Sometimes, too much," Xion said. Had she her hood off, Eve would have seen that her expression was one of annoyance. "Unlike Roxas, I think he's a typical guy."

"Girls talk a lot," the man by the doorway said.

"Girls are diverse, dude," Roman said, breaking from his conversation with Roxas. "Some are shy, some loud, some blonde, some Hispanic, and so on. Diverse."

Another question came to Eve's mind. "What does he talk about?"

"For some reason," Xion said, "He'll see something that may or may not agree with him, and get distracted talking about it, or showing it to his partner, if any. You should have seen yesterday. Speaking of which, are you okay? No headaches?"

[It's being asked again…] Eve thought. "What headaches?"

"From two days ago? They were there," Xion said, motioning to the boys talking in the background behind Eve. "You were also acting weird, too."

Eve struggled to remember, but drew up nothing. She remembered being on the tower and listening to the other four there. She remembered hearing Roman… but what he said that evening seemed to slur into darkness at some point. "I… remember the tower…" she finally said.

"Does it just cut at some point?" Roman asked.

"Yes…"

"Well, dang," Roman said, looking over Roxas' shoulder. "Think you're right, dude. Hey, you think you can explain this mission list thing to her?"

"Oh, right, right, right, right…" Roxas said, taking out one of the lists Roman had. "Hey, Eve?"

She turned to face him, her magenta eyes meeting with his blue. "Did you ever get a chance to learn anything about this?" he asked, showing her the list.

She took it in her hands and read it up and down. She then handed it back to him, shaking her head. "I think his elixir head might be able to explain it better than I can," Roman commented. "Now if everyone will excuse me, I will play hooky and see what happens."

The man in red wanted to say something, but Roman quickly cut him off with a quick flash of a one-finger gesture. "Yeah, he is pretty crass," Roxas said. "A lot of the time, he means well."

Eve stayed silent and glanced at the floor. "Well, if we're going on your first mission, I probably am the one stuck trying to explain this new system," Roxas continued, "Which I think is a little silly, since the put it into effect only yesterday."

"She was still asleep," Xion said. "Vexen said she was sleeping all day."

"Really…?" Eve asked quietly, bringing a hand to her temple.

"You don't remember that, either?" Roxas asked. "I think we need to get your blood pumping a little. So we'll try… collecting hearts. Innocent Europe."

"To get from world to world, you've probably been introduced to the dark corridor a little by Roman, right?" Xion asked.

Eve nodded. She remembered the boy's comments on the portals of light and how the images within were a little odd. "You have to do some wandering of your own to get to the world you want," Xion continued. "Also, look closely at the portal, if Roman didn't already tell you. There's no print, but you can sort of tell which world is which by comparing what you see to the name."

"I think Innocent Europe is that one with the floating island and the tower on it," Roxas said. "And bats flying around. Last time I was personally there was a while ago, and I didn't see that tower. Maybe—Eve?"

The girl was already gone. The remaining young Nobodies looked around the Grey Area, trying to look for anything. Considering that she was silent, it made sense that she would vanish like that without a word or even a noise. "Roxas."

He turned to find Eve standing in front of the entrance to the dark corridor. "Wait, how did… nevermind," he started.

* * *

There were no signs of valid life in the small, dust covered town. Allen looked around and threw a few rocks, but nothing responded but dust and maybe a few leaves flying by. "Man… is this what the western part of America looks like?" he asked himself.

He was sent to deal with some akuma that were sighted some time ago, but they seemed to be mysteriously absent. Perhaps the daylight contributed to this, but it wouldn't be out of their realm to attack during this time. The only thing he did manage to find that was hostile were the strange manifestations that had been popping up all over Europe and killing people. From what he observed, the way they did so was oddly similar to how the akuma killed. They both rarely left any sort of evidence, and the body was almost always gone afterwards. Those who fell victim to the akuma, though, tended to linger for a bit before black stars showed up on their skin, and they dissolved. Victims of the mystery manifestations simply evaporated into vapors almost on the spot. [Maybe those are the akuma?] he thought.

He activated his cursed eye to search for anything other than himself, but found nothing. He sighed and said to himself, "It must be those things."

Familiar clanking started to resound in a far end of the town. The clanking of a full suit of armor that belonged to a veteran Exorcist that somehow managed to operate largely separate of the Black Order. "Is that him?" he said aloud, starting in the direction of the noise.

* * *

One of the first things heard by the blonde Nobodies was someone abruptly snorting behind them. When they turned, they only saw large gates when snoring started. The source not only sounded close, but large as well, as if though it were nearly the entirety of the door's other side. "Oh crap…" Roxas said silently.

The two tiptoed away from the source and further into what seemed like a castle to them. From Roxas' judgment, they had shown up in the courtyard. "Everyone will be awake…" Eve said.

"I know," Roxas said, hiding behind a pillar in front of Eve. "I think we showed up at a really bad time."

Looking up, he gasped and pointed to a Yellow Opera floating about cautiously, seeming to keep an eye on the sky for something. "There's one!"

Upon hearing him, the Yellow Opera floated off in a frenzy, swooping past the two and further into the castle. "Do we follow it?" Eve asked.

"It's our only choice."

The castle proved to be quite a maze, and the inhabitants often lively. Roxas bore closer witness to Eve's self-transformation as she tore through Heartless (or smashed them) elegantly as a girl normally does. "Whoa…" he said, amazed.

"The things I keep seeing… are those hearts?" she asked once.

"Yeah. We collect those, we get closer to completing Kingdom Hearts. Did Roman ever elaborate on that at all?"

Eve shook her head, and the two ducked behind a corner as a man wearing a lab coat and holding a cup of coffee strolled past, humming. "All I know is that when we complete Kingdom Hearts, we become whole. Right now, we're 'Nobodies,' so we don't have hearts at all. Somehow, we still exist," Roxas said.

Eve felt a small sort of sensation at the statement, but she let it go, not knowing where it came from. "From what I've seen, it's only us young Nobodies doing the actual collecting, you included," Roxas continued.

She nodded slightly at the notion and the two continued on their mission. There was an unusually high concentration of Pureblood Heartless as they started to go down some levels underground, mostly Possessors. They seemed to act agitated and tried to force the two of them into walls or the ground. "What's with them?" Roxas asked in the aftermath of one such wave. "I've never known Heartless to act like that."

Eve stayed silent, nursing some wounds resulting from scraping against the walls.

They continued past rooms and stairs to an elevator of sorts, which seemed out of place to Roxas. The last he had heard of the world, its present day was the late years of the 19th century. He wasn't aware that electrically operated elevators even existed. Still, he didn't complain as he pressed a button, urging it to go down. Eve was looking from side to side the entire time, taking in the surroundings and remembering them for future use. Down the lift, they were greeted by what looked like a serious anachronism: a huge sort of technological laboratory. "I thought this was supposed to be the late 19th century!" Roxas remarked, not loud enough to cause echoes.

Eve looked in wonder as the sights of sleek metal and lab coats wandering amongst it unfolded before her. This was beyond anything in any book she had read so far, and she had read plenty of them. When the lift stopped, she and Roxas hid out of sight by keeping low and using the platform rises to their advantage. Surprisingly, many of the places they went through tended to be empty and devoid of humans, though they were compensated for by Heartless presences. The Possessor concentration seemed to be at its greatest in this area. "Why are there so many Possessors?" Roxas asked. "Are they trying to protect or free something?"

He looked around the huge expanse, scanning the various glass containment units in the distance. The sight was a little unsettling for Roxas, considering his mistake back at Vexen's laboratory. Eve merely felt nostalgia, neither good nor bad. Something to her right caught her eye. Something squirming in the distance, in one of the units. "Roxas, there."

The two moved to the edge of the platform and saw something some ways away. It seemed to be a blob of brown slime suspended in green liquid. A sort of cartoon face briefly flashed on its surface in their direction. "That almost looks like…" Roxas started.

"A Possessor?" Eve asked.

"I dunno… but we're going to find out."

Along the way, the two Nobodies had to evade detection by one of the lab coats, who sported a sort of blonde spiked hair going upwards (though not to Roxas's degree), followed by only a few Soldiers, a Bad Dog and more Possessors. The Possessors in particular seemed to be moving in the direction Eve and Roxas were going while the others seemed to serve mainly as distractions. Eve thought that something was seriously wrong, and that it had to do with the brown-ish blob she sighted earlier, which was now closer than before. [These "Possessors"…] she thought. [They want something other than people. They've avoided humans so far today…]

* * *

More balls of shadow energy came at the Lee siblings as the brother simply observed the subject intently, sipping his coffee every now and then. Lenalee was the one busy keeping them all away from Komui, and what she thought were robed people coming towards them as well didn't help at all. "Komui, how much longer?" Lenalee asked, irate as a creature materialized directly underneath her skirt, prompting her to kick it at the robed people a platform away. The boy ducked while the girl jumped back.

Something familiar struck Lenalee about the robed people, but right now, she had to focus on keeping the creatures away. "I can't believe no one's come by to help… I thought Kanda would have come by now!" Lenalee said.

Komui was more interested in his subject rather than Kanda's being there or not. "Well, give him time. I heard that there were some of those manifestations at the entrance. Besides, these things don't seem that bad to you, do they?" Komui remarked, smiling.

Lenalee gave another "pervert" a firm kick, aimed again at the robed people, who were on the bridge leading to the Lee siblings. This time, the boy materialized something to deflect and destroy the orb she kicked. She could have sworn the boy was holding a giant key. "Isn't this whole mess being caused because you decided to mess around with one of them?"

* * *

"He what! ?" Roxas exclaimed.

Eve quickly covered the boy's mouth with one hand while embedding a blade in a Possessor with the other. The pigtail girl spun around to face the two of them, also dealing with Possessors of her own while another lab coat seemed to be observing the creature in the tank. She shot them confused looks, as if though she had seen one or both of them at one point, causing both Nobodies to blink. "Hey… I've seen those robes before…" she remarked, walking towards them.

Instinctively, Roxas drew his Keyblade. The girl stopped and looked at it curiously. "That, on the other hand… hey, Komui?"

The man turned around, eyes obscured by light glaring on his glasses. "Yes? What is it?" he asked, holding a clipboard and pencil. "Outsiders?"

"Yeah, but besides that, take a look at the—"

"Just go ahead and kick them out of here." Komui turned to face the containment unit again and continued writing as the creature warped, diffused and re-fused again.

At this statement, Eve and Roxas went totally white, right down to their robes. The girl whipped around, irate. "How can you say that, Komui! ? Not only could this be Innocence, but we need to do something about that… THING, and they can help!"

Without turning around, Komui merely said, "No outsiders. You know the drill, Lenalee."

Lenalee let out a sigh of disappointment and turned to the Nobodies, more sincere than before. "Sorry about my brother," she said, "He's a bit of a hardhead and pretty obsessed about this… whatever it is. In boy terms, it's like a pile of akuma turds."

Eve tilted her head curiously as Roxas replied, "That thing? Well, we won't be here for much longer."

"You plan on doing what now?" Komui asked, not turning around.

"Look, whatever you have in there is really dangerous, and I'm here to take it out. What is it, anyway?"

Komui turned around to face the Nobodies and his sister, the initial glare in his glasses absent this time around. "Oh, I happened to introduce some akuma tissue to it, and it took it in after some persuading from me," he said, "It was originally one of those ball things that my sister there's been smacking for a while."

Behind him, the creature was ramming itself against the walls of the containment unit, causing the platform to shake about and rumble like a small earthquake. Eve gasped as one of the impacts actually cracked the glass, and small amounts of the fluid, which was really just plain water with green lighting in it from in the unit, started to trickle out. "Oh, now that's a new development," Komui remarked, seemingly not affected by any of this, though he now was standing behind his sister.

Lenalee huffed at her brother as the cracks webbed their way around the container, and small streams of water now started to spring forth. The creature now was really trying to escape its prison, splitting into two and hitting the walls in rhythm, hastening the cracking. By now, Komui was now at the start of the walkway leading to the platform, now holding a coffee cup with a pink rabbit on it. Eve looked back and cast him a confused look as an entire section of glass was blown away by the creature. Within seconds, the entirety of the glass followed, allowing water to flood the platform as the creature oozed out onto the floor slowly, as if resting from obtaining its newfound freedom. At that same moment, a field of hexagons forming a wall around the platform, barring entrance and exit and trapping Eve, Roxas and Lenalee with the slime, which was now blackening and revealing the face that Possessors have.

With a primal roar from the slime creature, the battle commenced.

One attack that the trio had to watch out for was the occasion of the creature making a ball of itself and bouncing about the makeshift arena, resulting in splashes whenever it hit the ground. The mass and weight of its bouncing threatened to inflict damage to them, so they had to do their best to dodge at all costs. Another attack the creature used was to bring down a slimy tentacle from the center of the field three times. Eve blocked a few such strikes and was pushed back some, but still ready to fight. Perhaps the most amazing thing is when it leapt into the air and forced itself into a spiked ball, many spikes hitting the ground and as sharp as a metal blade. This, Roxas tried to block, but to no avail, resulting in the creature piercing his left shoulder. Lenalee took the opportunity, though, to jump up to the "core" and give it a hard upper kick to its face, stunning it and leaving it to melt back down to a vulnerable hill.

After some time, the slime creature changed tactics. It added a bizarre new trick to its arsenal—stretching itself out so thin, it was practically one with the water. This left the trio to fight Possessors and Shadows, all of which released familiar green orbs which healed their wounds and bruises (note that Komui is writing down notes as all this is happening). When it reformed into its solid mass, it immediately went into its original bouncing riot, but faster, therefore harder to avoid. At the same time, every part of the ground where the creature bounced, a smaller version of it appeared, capable only of its crashing tentacle. The downside to this was that if blocked, it would have been stunned, a fact that Eve and Roxas took care to take advantage of. The creature reworked its spikeball attack, rotating around and periodically sending its spikes out and retracting them four times before reverting to its original slimy form.

In time, Lenalee was able to deliver a double-legged flip kick to its face, sending it crashing into the invisible barrier which shone whenever something hit it. It made a sickening squishing sound upon impact, but that wasn't stopping Eve from jumping up above the creature. In midair, she clasped her hands together to form a single, massive blade that was practically as long as she was tall. Below, Roxas readied his Keyblade. As Eve came down from above, Roxas jumped up with a rising slash, cutting into the slime and dividing it into three sections. Time seemed to slow down for a brief moment as the slime creature was overcome by the light, blinding the siblings in the process. Various gasps resounded from the rest of the giant laboratory, as other scientists took notice. When the light faded, the Nobodies were gone, leaving the siblings confused and looking around the drenched arena. "I admit it," Komui said, raising up his arms. "I have no idea as to what the hell just happened."

* * *

_I still wonder why he left, though…_ Allen thought as he came up to the gate to the Black Order. Thanks to his ally, he managed to finish-and get back home-sooner than expected.

Stretching and yawning, he waved to the massive Gatekeeper on the wall as the gates raised to allow him access within. To his left, he could have sworn he saw something just as he came in. When he looked, it was gone. _What was that, _he thought,_ and what was that energy I felt?_

* * *

"Time. That's, like, a good 15 seconds."

"Not very long."

"Nah—whoa, dude!"

Roman and Xion were looking at two very wet Nobodies, with Eve shaking a little. "Okay, what happened?" Roman asked.

Roxas sighed and shook his head about to shake some water out of his hair. This proved to be a bad idea, though, as Xion and Roman raised up their arms to keep from getting wet, themselves. "Some guy's science experiment got loose," he answered. "He was experimenting with a Possessor."

"Well, what'd they do to result in all this, then?" Roman said, mostly talking to Eve, who was now holding her arms to keep warm.

Shuddering a little, Eve replied before Roxas could. "A-akuma tissue, he said."

"Isn't that the local weird shit in Innocent Europe?" Roman said.

Roxas was too far towards the exit of the Grey Area to reply, shaking his arms to get more water off. The red man jumped back to avoid getting his magazine wet and muttered bitterly before resuming his reading. Xion asked Eve, "You know where the showers and such are, right?"

Eve nodded. "Well, you better get there before you catch a cold, you know. We can't have you bedridden again."

As Eve ran off, Roman called after her, "Don't forget to grab a spare set of clothes from your room!"

Within half an hour, Eve was back in the library, but by herself, now. She was reading on various weapons from various worlds. The book detailed how some worlds had odd mixtures of guns and swords that she herself was quite perplexed by. It also mentioned an "Imagine Blade," but she couldn't visualize it because not only was there no illustration, but there was text specifically saying that it can be made invisible. She picked the book out to further develop her personal arsenal and perhaps find better versions of certain weapons and shields.

Roman nonchalantly walked in, a book in his hands, and humming some showtune she had heard on television when she wasn't paying attention (not that she paid much attention to TV or computers that much, anyway). He walked over to the towering bookshelves and placed the book in an empty spot among their ranks and pulled out a new one. Both times when he passed by, he didn't take a second look, but rather rubber-necked to a degree before being on his way. What he was looking at, Eve couldn't begin to guess.

Putting her own book down, she picked out another one from the miniature stack she had picked out. The one she had in her hands was… interesting, to say the least. Roman quickly returned to take it from her grasp, smiling sheepishly. "Heh heh, my bad," he said, walking off with the book.

Eve hadn't gotten a clear look at it, but she could have sworn that the girl on the cover had pink hair.

* * *

[Enemy Data: Infestation]

A bizarre marriage of Possessors and "akuma" matter, resulting in a malleable, slimy mass of terror. Block or find weak spots to stun it, then move in for the attack!

* * *

[Author's Notes]

- Switching back to Roman, we've got Youkai Academy antics in "Out of Mind." There will be a non-graphic puking-on-a-door scene, so be warned.

- Hur hur I mentioned CREED.

- If you're wondering about the design for the science division in Innocent Europe, I didn't have a whole lot to run with. I think you need to see the anime or read the manga to better visualize it, because I got confused, myself. Besides, since I'm writing an anime fanfic, that gives me a bit of freedom since some serieses have either not finished or have big enough holes for me to exploit.


	4. Out of Mind

If there were any sort of dream Roman detested more than senseless ones, it would have to be the likes that are nothing put pure static. However, this was only the first time he had such a dream, but he detested it nonetheless.

In reality, he knocked himself in the head twice, much like trying to get an old television set to function. "Come on, stupid…" he muttered sleepily.

The next thing he knew, the static cut to blackness, but only because he rolled out of bed and onto the hard floor. Sitting up, now awake, he looked around his bedroom. No one. "Ow," he declared to the empty room. "God… what was that?"

* * *

The first thing Roman did upon walking into the Grey Area, even before scanning the room for today's occupants, was ask the man in red something. "Dude, do you have a name?" he asked.

"What, is it important?" the man said, looking up from a gaming magazine.

"Yeah, like if, for some reason, anyone needs to call on you, you've gotta address to SOMETHING, right?"

"I'd go with 'guy in red' or something to that degree," the man replied.

Roman rolled his eyes before scanning the Area. Today, there was Demyx looking over a piece of paper over on the left set of couches, and Xion was penciling in answers to a Sudoku puzzle on the right side. To Roman, such puzzles were, well, puzzling. His mind would often play tricks on him, making him forget about which numbers were in which rows, columns and blocks. This often had Roxas ask him if he was dyslexic, but seeing Roman's small bookcase in his room dispelled such claims. "She paid up," the man in red said.

"Did I ask?"

"Just saying."

Roman cursed under his breath and walked behind Xion's chair, not noticing Eve walking in with the comic from the other day, amongst other books. Xion apparently hadn't gone very far, as she was only on page four of the thin Sudoku book. After filling a couple of squares, Xion stopped and exhaled. "I know you're back there," she said. "And yes, I'm not good at these, either. In fact, I just picked one to start with."

Roman furrowed his brow slightly and reached over Xion to turn back a page in the small book. The other puzzles were empty. "Well, hell," he said. "I'm influencing you. Is that supposed to be good or bad?"

Xion wasted no time in smacking Roman in the left side of his face with her own left hand. Turning around and closing the book, she asked, "Look, I care about you. I really do, but do you really have to act like such… you know… a boy?"

"You know, provided what we are, I'm just exaggerating various aspects that we are capable of." In his head, Roman added, _And perhaps you would like to tell me how you're capable of being a typical girl. To a degree._

"…True, true," Xion said, getting up and oblivious to the boy's thoughts.

The two started towards the swirling portal into darkness when Roman caught something out of the corner of his eye. Looking to his left, Eve seemed to be weighing a massive golden sword with just one hand. It took Roman a while to realize that there was a section of her hair attached to the handle of the blade. She looked up at him, magenta, near-emotionless eyes meeting brown, resolute eyes. His eyes darted left and right between whatever before he said, "Okay, there is no way you should be able to do THAT," pointing to the sword.

"It's light to me," she said, softly and barely audible.

Eyes darting back and forth between the girl and the sword, Roman eventually said, "Of… course it is… good luck with that."

* * *

Roman disappeared into the portal of darkness with a hand in his robes, as if though he were Napoleon. Eve was continually left fascinated by the boy's behavior for some reason. When she looked to her right, Demyx was looking at her in amazement, his sitar across his lap. "I can't even remember where I read about this kind of sword…" she said to the bewildered Nobody.

One of the sitar strings broke, making one of his eyes twitch and a hand twitch as well. Eve let out a sigh and reverted her hair to its normal state, falling in line with the rest of her hair in a golden waterfall. Another sitar string broke in half.

* * *

Roman and Xion stood around aimlessly in the dark corridor, his brow furrowed in remembrance. "I… forgot what we were originally talking about." He suddenly added, "You know what? Fuck it—new topic."

"Like what we're going to do today?" Xion asked.

After a moment of thought, Roman answered, "Along those lines, yeah. Hey, where's Pe—"

"I don't sound Hispanic!"

"Jesus, woman! Anyway, so I figured that we should go after Xaldin… it's been a few days, and we all know what often results from anyone being missing for more than a few days," Roman said, as the two walked around the dark corridor, trying to find the portal of light leading to Youkai Academy.

"But don't you think it's odd that he'd go back to the same place twice? Maybe he was trying to find that immense energy source that disappeared the last time the three of us were there," Xion said.

"I know, right? Shit like that doesn't just go, 'poof' like that. If it was big enough, there should have been some sort of indicator or indication. If four Nobodies couldn't find that, I highly doubt the thing actually existed," Roman continued.

"Hold on," Xion said, stopping him. "Did he ever say what the source was? Like a person or an object or Heartless?"

"I haven't the slightest clue. I'm not one of the high-brows," Roman remarked, hardly noticing something passing him. "Maybe it has something to do with the fact that school seems to be real fucked up. Remember how I told you one of the girls actually bit Roxas on the hand? Normal people can't do that—What the hell?"

He was looking past her to track the figure that had just passed the two of them. Xion turned to see the robed figure and stared for a bit, trying to recognize it while Roman did several double takes of a nearby portal and the one leading to the Castle. The two stammered as they tried to figure out just what it was that just happened, ending it with a collective groan of confusion. "Um…" Roman started. "If that was supposed to be him… now what?"

"I guess… go somewhere," Xion said, obviously improvising and shrugging.

Roman looked at her, then at the nearby portal. He looked closely to see a floating island with a building surrounding a large rosario at ground level while bats flew around the higher parts. "Hey, since we're over here," Roman said. Xion made no effort to argue with him, still mystified.

* * *

_Terra Branford, Youkai Academy attendee, Junior year…_

A girl with a messy blonde ponytail was up against the wall, facing down a rather large four-legged creature. It was hunched down low, drool dripping from its mouth and white glaring eyes fixated on her.

_I don't know how this ended up happening…_

The girl clutched her bag close to herself, and she tried not to make any sudden movements as she moved slowly to the school gate, hoping someone would come by to help. Unfortunately, the beast had other plans.

_In a boy's words… I'm completely screwed._

"Aaaiiiiiieeeeee!"

The beast charged as Terra took off running in the opposite direction, rushing through the gates and onto campus, passing several students and bumping into a few. She had never had anything of this sort of thing happen to her before, so this sudden attack came as a complete surprise. She didn't want to use any powers… the risk was too great for all parties.

Murmurs and conversations were sparked upon seeing the Branford girl being chased by the monster porcupine. "Hey… isn't that the headmaster's pet?"

"Who, the girl or the thing?"

"The thing, you idiot! That's Spiky, all right… but he's usually so docile. What's with the sudden rampage?"

Terra let out a horrifying scream as Spiky bit down on the back of her skirt. It was intent on biting her, next, as it shook about the torn piece of fabric it secured violently and spat it out, focusing its glare on Terra once again. "When's the usual porcupine mating season?" somebody asked.

_Oh no…_ Terra thought. _The back of my skirt… my panties must be…!_

"Terra! Don't move!"

Within seconds, Kurumu Kurono flew in and shoulder tackled the creature, sending it into a wall. When it got up and recovered, it ran out the gates and knocked over several students, whining. "That was really weird…" Kurumu said, not having broken a sweat. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine…" Terra said, shyly. "But… as for my skirt… well, try to keep my back towards other girls, okay?" she added nervously, blushing as some students began to snicker at something.

"What, did your skirt catch on—"

Kurumu's eyes went wide at the sight of various little characters looking to the left. "D-Don't look! Just get me back to the dorms!" Terra said, wheeling around and covering her panties with her schoolbag.

"Sorry, I couldn't resist…"

* * *

"Uh…I actually forgot what we were going to do," Roman said. "My brain ain't working today."

_When does it work?_ Xion thought to herself. _Since it's you, it's hard to tell._

Amazingly, the two ended up on top of one of the school buildings. In Roman's mind, it was probably Xaldin who put it up there to begin with as a convenient way out without being detected, which was okay. What was NOT okay was the fact that students were roaming the campus freely, and it sounded as if though someone was assaulted by something or someone. "So… find Heartless?" Roman suggested.

Xion took a moment to deliberate this. "Yeah. Yeah, that'll work," she said.

"Okay… now to get down without dying."

They were on top of one of the shorter buildings, but Roman's fear of heights still made him tense up. Not only that, but they had to find a way down without drawing any attention to themselves, which made the ordeal extra difficult. Roman crouched down near the edge of the roof, to boost his balance (which tended to be poor by default) and scanned the plaza. If they climbed down, someone might notice, and Roman was definitely NOT ready to deal with whatever security system they had. Staying up only meant that they would have to sit in the cool air, which would gradually get colder. "We need a bell schedule for this fucking place," Roman remarked.

"Or, we could just go through a window, like this," Xion called out, already in one of the rooms.

"Oh. That'll work. Maybe there's one up on the wall in there."

In the classroom, they didn't find any bell schedule on the walls, only a conveniently placed chest behind the teacher's desk. Roman's usual way of opening the larger chests (which this one was), was to practically throw it open by getting a hold of the keyhole and wrenching it upwards. He merely gave small chests a kick. Inside this particular chest was an ever important map, which took the form of a disk that went into mission trackers. "Where does this shit even come from, anyways?" Roman remarked. "I can understand the one back in Sweeper's Field Luxord and I found a while back, but this? I mean, who in this world has an honest-to-God use for this thing?"

Xion's only answer was a shrug. At that exact moment, Roman sensed that something was… wrong. He looked at the sides of the chest, then turned behind him to face the door. Nothing, but he just felt that something was about to happen, and he didn't necessarily take kindly to such feelings. "I think we gotta hide," he said.

"From what?"

"I have no idea, but you better find a spot, quick, just to be safe."

* * *

A few moments before Yukari got to the door, there was a commotion inside the room that made her freeze up. There were two voices, one male and one female. The girl didn't seem to happy with some sort of idea, but reluctantly seemed to go along with it, whatever it was. Tentatively, Yukari slid the door to the classroom open, and peeked inside. Nothing but desks, that chest Nekonome found the other day and—there.

"There you are!" Yukari exclaimed happily as she made a beeline for the desk.

She took her usual magic wand from the desk that Nekonome-sensei had asked for earlier in the day. What she needed it for was beyond her. One of Yukari's thoughts was that she was planning on seeing who could get open the mysterious chest that had suddenly appeared the day before. No spell the teacher knew (which wasn't very many, or at all to begin with) could get it open, and no key was big enough to fit in the huge keyhole right on top, so several students must have been stumped.

Yukari hummed happily when she heard a squeak behind her, making her stop in her tracks. She waited and looked around for it to occur again, but nothing happened, so she went on her way once again. A puff of air stopped her. "Oh, come on!" she said to her own stomach, remembering the chili the cafeteria offered that day.

Another squeak sent her out the door, clutching at her stomach, fuming.

* * *

Roman hit the ground unceremoniously, headfirst. He had managed to wedge his arguably thick figure into the underside of the desk, propping himself up with his head and feet, which, by itself, caused a fair amount of discomfort. More discomfort resulted from trying to get out from his little hole, rubbing the part of his forehead where he had landed and shaking the dizziness from head pressure off. At least he was able to stave off the unwanted visitor, albeit with the fact that sneakers squeaking up against wood tends to sound like flatulence. "Hey Xion, you okay in there?" he called out.

A knock from inside the chest answered. Since it was already unlocked (albeit by force), reopening the chest was a very simple matter. Strangely enough, getting Xion to get in there was physically simple. As far as trying to get her to voluntarily get in, that's another story. "You're not hurt, are you?" Roman asked.

"I'm fine, I'm fine…" Xion said reassuredly, brushing dust off the bottom parts of her robes. "This school wasn't built for us to be able to hide."

"I think that's the point."

Outside the classroom, the witch girl that had walked in was miraculously absent, but the same couldn't be said for the Heartless. In fact, the hallway was nearly inundated with them. "Okay, how did THIS happen?" Roman asked, motioning to the Heartless.

Further down the hallway the two were looking down, the sounds of spellcasting and objects being smashed or banged against bodies echoed towards them. That answered an unasked question, but before Roman could ask it, a Search Ghost slashed out its claws at him, prompting him to duck. Xion slammed the claws down to the ground with her Keyblade, barely missing Roman's head in the process ("You were thinking of aiming at me at first, didn't you?" he would ask some time later). The Search Ghost was pulled forward by the unseen forces loosely tethering its hands to the rest of it, allowing Roman to deliver a crushing headbutt to its middle section.

An Aerial Knocker brought both gloves down on Xion's Keyblade, attempting to knock it from her grasp, but to limited success, as Roman grabbed the tail of the Ghost he headbutted and spun it into the Knocker before it could attempt an upward hook. She took the opportunity to slide under the assist to stab another Ghost clean through, and thrust her weapon up, leaving an enormous gash going from the midsection up through the head. Meanwhile, Roman let go of the Ghost to deliver a spinning backhand fist to a Knocker followed by a forward punch. He heard something crunch at the blow, and he was sure it was nothing of his. The blow also caused the enemy to explode a moment later, releasing its heart. A Ghost had the pleasure of appearing in front of Roman, but he wasn't having it at that moment, as he pulled its loose eye and let it snap back, disorienting the creature and setting it up for a vicious flying knee.

The fighting moved to a lower level as the two Nobodies jumped down and promptly crushed a Creeper Plant that was unfortunate enough to "spawn" (Roman's terminology) directly below them. The lower level had plenty of them in V formations, each with a Large Body in front. Xion rather than Roman saw a new tactic to use. Running past a few Ghosts which had floated down from the upper level, Xion quickly jumped over the Body and gave it a hard swing to the back side towards Roman, who was busy whipping around an uprooted Plant by the roots. After throwing said Plant, he barely had time to react to the massive Heartless that was barreling towards him with a kick, which sent it a small distance up in the air. A knee sent it up higher still, allowing him to spin-kick it to Xion, who sidestepped it and batted it into the V formations of Plants. "Steee-rike!" Roman proclaimed happily, pumping his fist.

One contingency Xion hadn't seen was the fact that Bodies tended to bounce, and rolling was no situation that prevented this. "Oh, crap," both Nobodies said.

The two jumped out of the way of the now renegade soccer/baseball, watching It flatten pretty much any other Heartless in its path. Soon, the Body barreled out of sight behind a corner, where they could still hear it crashing into walls and bouncing, especially since things had quieted down quite a bit. "So… all in favor of doing that when the opportunity presents itself?" Roman asked, returning to a neutral stance.

Xion could only shrug when two girls shrieked down the hall. The sound of a slash and the signature sound of a destroyed Heartless followed suit. "Uh… yeah, we're fucked. C'mon, let's go," Roman said, pointing in the direction he was walking, which was away from the direction of the screaming girls.

* * *

"You think they have some sort of announcement system?" Roman asked. "If so, why didn't they warn anyone about those Heartless? Are the locals just plain unfamiliar?"

"Probably. Just one thing, and I know this sounds more like one of your lines, but…" Xion looked down at the lower levels, observing a raven-black haired girl passing by, unaware of their presence. "Why are we still here?"

"Well, before we split," Roman said in his defense," I figured that we should try to test just how paranoid these people are. Now, Japan is a country that has honor rooted in it, so…"

Xion rolled her eyes. If it wasn't science, Heartless fighting or semi (or completely) random banter, it was some insane plan. "You're going to humiliate somebody?" she asked unenthusiastically.

"Along those lines, yeah."

Roman turned and unzipped his pants in front of a door he had been standing in front of. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pee on this man's door. I think it belongs to that tool dude, so I have justification."

Xion moved next to him, crouching, opening wide and sticking a finger in her mouth. Trying to talk past it, she said, "No, that'll never last in the sunlight. If I know you, you want something a little more permanent."

"Since when did YOU become the Queen of Insults, eh?" Roman asked, zipping back up.

He made the small error of using the restroom at one point before now, so he couldn't have done his business for two reasons:

- Xion, obviously.

- His bladder was empty.

"Anyway, when we're done here, we find that corridor and get the hell out of here. I think we've caused enough trouble in one day as it is, so— Oh, Dear God!"

Whatever lunch Xion had stolen from the cafeteria was now exiting her. On the door. Tsukune Aono's door. "Are you actually throwing up! ?"

* * *

"It was those quesadillas they were serving, wasn't it?" Tsukune said. "I knew something was wrong when a bug crawled out of one somebody else was having."

"See, that's why pee is more efficient!" the male voice said.

Tsukune was baffled to hear this, especially since he couldn't see who was throwing up, and who was accompanying her. He could easily tell it wasn't Moka; she had a tougher stomach than that. Not even Yukari, as she ate the Monster Durian with no problems during that one Self-Study class some time ago. It was probably a random student for all Tsukune knew.

The girl's retching quieted down to coughing after a small period of time, followed by the boy asking, "Are you quite done yet?"

A pause. "Oh, come on, seriously? You may have short hair, but that doesn't necessarily justify you using the finger."

_A misogynist?_ Tsukune thought.

"I think it's about time for us to go…"

* * *

Vexen could have sworn that golden hands repeatedly tried to touch one of his flasks. In this particular experiment he was conducting, he was forced to move a few of his chemical beakers, tubes and flasks to the Grey Area. He wanted to make sure that the successful combination could be administered as quickly as possible to Eve, due to the possible nature of the product. This new modification to Compound NM would allow Eve new abilities without damaging anything else… hopefully. A "prototype" version of it known as the NS drug would severely stunt her development, and Vexen certainly didn't want that.

To Roxas and Demyx, he passed off the experiments as an adaptive bio-immunity. Even as Nobodies, they still had bodies overall, and infectious bodies aren't limited to those with hearts, which was, in a way, true. To the man in the red, Vexen was just another mad scientist type.

As he was deciding to find out which tube's contents to pour into the mixture before him, he caught sight of the golden hand again. It was brief, but he could have sworn that they were almost always close to Eve. _Further manifestations of her powers…?_

Vexen picked a green tube shook it around a bit, making sure that the contents hadn't somehow settled. _This one. Liquefied magic energy. Thank any existing higher authorities for Innocent Europe._

He dropped in two drops of this and re-corked it, next picking up a tube with a golden powder inside of it, barely covering the bottom. _Again, thank any existing higher authorities…_

Vexen was extra careful in tipping the tube over. Slowly, the powder made its way in jerky descents down the sides of the tube. Closer, closer… One final tap should—

His eyes traced the hand to its wrist, where it seemed to separate into strands… which led right to Eve's head. She was looking, too, but she seemed to be double tasking between holding her concentration and reading her book. "Fine," Vexen said any possible whining could be staged.

Eve's hair gave the tube the gentlest tap with one finger, and what little powder was in the tube fell into the mixture, settling on top for a moment before sinking in out of sight, turning it from blood red slowly to… glowing white?

The man standing besides the entrance put up his magazine higher, as if to protect his face from something—WHOOM.

* * *

"Guess who threw u—Oh my God."

Practically the entire Grey Area was covered in soot, save for the floor. Roxas and Demyx were sitting on the opposite side of Vexen and Eve, and it seemed that everyone, even the red man, got hit. Roman's attention shifted to that of Eve, who seemed to be manipulating a hand that was practically blackened by whatever event had transpired.

The hand seemed to peel apart into little strands much like hair… _Wait, what?_

When the hand had completely broken down, the associated hair fell limp against the arm of the chair Eve was sitting in, whose face was scrunched, perhaps to shield her eyes with her eyelids and her book, though it seemed that her only real defense was her eyelids. She gave a light cough, emitting a small black cloud. "Uh… do I want to know?" Roman asked.

Roxas cast a quick glance at Vexen, who was brushing himself off along with a round flask containing something sky blue, almost clear. "You might," he said.

"Um… maybe later."

Xion stumbled out of the dark corridor, gagging slightly at the bad taste left in her mouth. She walked past Roman and the hooded man right out of the Grey Area without a word to anyone else beforehand. Roxas was puzzled by this and turned to Roman, hoping for an answer, but got none. The look on his face said that she brought it upon herself.

* * *

[Journal Entry]

How long has it been since I written anything down in this thing? I actually lost track. Wait…

4 or 5 days. Then again, nothing really noteworthy up until now.

First, news from a couple days back: Sweeper's Field. Apparently, Keyblades aren't the only thing capable of killing Heartless. Thing is, they are the ones that are used to keep hearts from the darkness. In the case of the Organization, it's used to collect hearts. I think I should keep a note of this, though I wonder about myself.

Second, today, Xion threw up. Poor girl. Apparently, when I tried to pee on Tsukune Aono's dormitory door (tried), she took it upon herself to provide an alternative. I dunno what sense that made, but if it works, it works… at the cost of general well-being.

Speaking of (I think) I wonder how Eve did yesterday. I was distracted showing Xion that new thing Vexen made, the Vanguard Gauntlets. Under normal circumstances, they activate when I've landed enough hits on enemies. They're pretty cool looking things, but I can't help but wonder that, if redesigned, they would work with—WHY AM I THINKING THAT! ?

* * *

Roman couldn't bring himself to write down "children's card games" for some bizarre reason. He stabbed at the paper with his pencil to try to force his hand to erase the capitalized print and replace it with the appropriate text, but he couldn't. He groaned and gave up, sticking the pencil in the oval indentation in the desk made for pencils and closing his journal. "Sheesh. The things I think," he said to himself, leaning back on his chair and looking at the ceiling.

_Okay, so I've got personality down,_ he thought. _But personality isn't much without the corresponding memories. For all I know, I probably was an emo boy… _He froze at the statement, and his neutral expression turned to a concerned frown with a furrowed brow to match. His eyes darted back and forth nervously, imagining what he could have been… and it wasn't a pretty sight. _God, I hope not._

He got up from his seat and walked to the mirror he had placed on the wall next to his desk. It wasn't a very large one, just enough so that he could get a full view of his own body. He moved in close to it, pulling up his sleeves slightly, enough to observe his wrists and inspect for anything. His left wrist was fine, but his right was occupied by a Velcro-bound sports watch. He took it off and set it on the desk next to him, then looked at the region underneath, which was lighter than the rest of his complexion, but not by much. Nothing unusual aside from the coloration. He breathed a sigh of relief.

The sound of his door opening caught his attention. Through the doorway walked in Xion, who was in a much better state than earlier. She gave him a confused look and said, "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Roman quickly replied, showing both wrists to Xion.

"Oh, jeez…" Xion put her hand to her face. "With all that 'JUMP' you read, I swear that one day, either Roxas or I'll walk in here and you'll be reading Icha Icha Paradise or some other perverted novel I've heard about."

"What the fuck is that?" Roman replied truthfully and quickly. Maybe too quickly.

"Okay, I stand corrected. You'll be reading one of those more vulgar series."

Roman quickly picked up a book he had set at the corner opposite of his watch. "They can only show so much, so shut up. Besides, it's impossible to see **you** half or completely naked whatsoever. And this is coming from a guy—"

"Can we not get into that?" Xion said, trying to avoid another topic. "Anyway, Eve wanted to ask you something, but you had already gone before she could ask."

"What, she couldn't come here herself? I'm not THAT intimidating, am I?"

"No, that's not the question. No, I don't think she quite understands that yet."

"That's in reverse order, isn't it?"

Xion rolled her eyes. Roman was always trying to make sure that he hadn't misheard anything, thus adding to the amount of talking he was capable of. "She wanted to ask you more about hearts. On her first mission, I think you left some things out."

"Well, what's going on?" Roman said as he started out the room.

Xion explained to him that Eve told her that the hearts of the Heartless she destroyed looked the same as those destroyed by the three of them (Roxas, Xion and Roman), as opposed to those that the rest of the Organization took care of. "So that makes four of—Oh, Good God!"

Upon entering Eve's room, Roman and Xion were greeted by the sight of her clutching a large golden broadsword. She looked at them without moving her head upwards, giving a small sense of innocence. "That-that's a big sword. That's a really big sword. Why do you have a really big sword?" Roman said, semi-stupefied.

Eve observed the weapon in her hand like a knife, turning it over, though minding its size. After a while, she finally answered, "Practice. It was a little heavier the first time." The sword then dissolved back into her own hair, which settled back with the rest of it.

"Uh…huh…" Roman said, still a little intimidated. "I… may have to get back to you later."

With this, he quickly ran back to his room, and set the door to remain shut until the following morning.

* * *

[Author's Notes]

- Hello, "Island of Steel"! Roman and Roxas run with Wanzers (wanderpanzers) while Eve… well, her interactions with Kokoa will be quite interesting.

- Poor Terra. Her first outing in the fic and part of her skirt was torn up by a monster. I feel bad for her now.

- I don't know how many people caught this, but the title of this chapter's actually a reference to Red vs. Blue. I really wanted to find a "Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow" moment, but Roman wasn't around for it.


	5. Island of Steel and Spoken Mind

__

What did he stay up so late for…?

Roman was notorious amongst Roxas, Xion and Axel for sleeping heavily. One could pluck several (read: about ten or eleven) hairs from his head and he would barely react. This factored into this day's morning blues primarily because he was oversleeping, which was something he actually rarely did in spite of his lazy tendencies. Roxas had walked in with Axel and Eve to find out what was keeping the boy when they were greeted by the sight of him wearing nothing except a black tanktop and dark blue boxers. Eve felt a slight warmth at her face, but ignored it.

Roxas poked Roman's sleeping form lightly, just beside his right temple, using the Keyblade. He only stirred slightly. Eve offered her own try, concentrating on changing her right index finger into an impossibly long stirring rod no more than a pencil's average width. At the sight, Roxas and Axel were startled. Eve hesitated for a moment before prodding the boy, wondering how light the tap should be. Finally, she gave a light poke. Roman's reaction was a bit harsh, smacking himself in the right side of his face, believing that he was being assaulted by a bug in his dream (it involved a legion of high-pitched people). "Ow! Man!" he exclaimed.

He sat up, holding his hand to his face, and glared at Roxas and Axel in particular. "Okay, who's the idiot?" he asked.

"You hit yourself," Axel said, shrugging.

"And I only prodded you once," Roxas added in his defense.

Roman shot mean glances at the two of them. "You're dirty fuckers," he said, getting up and heading for the door. "Don't repeat that!" he quickly added in Eve's direction before the door even opened.

When Roman had left, Axel said, "Well, isn't he pleased as punch?"

"That doesn't even make any sense…" Eve said to herself. From her current personal intuition, she was right. She hadn't read any dictionaries on humorous sayings just yet.

* * *

There were a few members sitting around the Grey Area, presumably before they went off on their missions for the day. Luxord and Larxene were sitting to Eve's left, not paying much attention to each other, and the other side was occupied by Roman (still with a hand to the right side of his face), Vexen, Marluxia, and a new addition. A sort of flying creature with little purple wings and a pom-pom attached to its head by a string, giving the impression of an anglerfish, and it wore Organization robes like a typical member, though a bright red ball-nose stuck out. It hovered as high as the nearby man in red was tall (just slightly taller than Roman, who in turn, was slightly taller than Eve). She tilted her head curiously and walked over to the unfamiliar creature, Roman soon following, the pain in his face having faded.

"Okay… what is THIS?" he asked.

The creature raised a paw(?) to speak when Eve stopped it by trying to say something, herself. "Moogle," she said quickly. "Flying creatures found throughout the universe. Often good forgers and masters of the process of 'synthesis.'"

Roman moved his head back from Eve's direction slightly, surprised by the sudden outburst of information. Frankly, he hadn't seen any "Moogles" in any world just yet, which struck him as a little odd. "No, duh," the hooded man said, leaning against the wall.

"You, shush," Roman said back. "Anyway… what's this whole synthesizing business?"

* * *

Roman only managed to take two steps into the dark corridor when he fell flat on his face. Apparently, he didn't ask the right question, as he was bombarded by a whole slew of information that he didn't seem to take in well, because it wasn't the answer that he wanted right away. Eve, however, was able to resist because she was able to piece together tidbits she had read about with what the Moogle had said. "Hey, Eve," Roman asked from the floor of the corridor. "You think it's possible for flatulence to end up in one's brain?"

Axel's reply in Eve's stead was rather harsh, because he stepped on Roman's head on his way in and said, "He means a brain fart."

Roxas also treaded on the back of the other boy's head, saying nothing, followed by a whistling Demyx. Eve was the most merciful of them, as she stepped over the fallen Nobody, who picked himself up, struggling to not stumble on his way forward. "So what's the plan for today?" Demyx asked. "There's five of us, so we'll probably have a group of three. I call that one." The only reason he did so was so that he could stay out of harm's way, as he normally tried.

Roman came by, smacked Demyx over the back of his head and said, "Actually WANT to kill things for once, man! It happens practically every mission, somehow, anyways."

"Oh yeah? What about reconnaissance missions?"

"Can we drop this before things get ugly? I really don't feel like having a semi-pointless argument. Anyway, let's see what missions we got left…"

Roman unfolded and straightened out the mission list he was keeping in his pocket. He had crossed out the missions already completed (he put a note next to Find Xaldin reading "WTF?"), leaving only one left. Gather Emblems. "Oh… shit."

"Well, if it's okay with you guys, I've got a solo mission in this place called Huffman Island. I have to gather synthesis materials," Roxas said. "Come to think of it… how am I gonna do that if they're random drops? Furthermore, I've never even heard of Huffman Island."

"Well, you better count your lucky stars, then," Roman said. Turning to Demyx, he added, "You, too. You're comin' with me."

"What?"

Before Demyx could put up any sort of argument, he was being dragged off by his hair away from Axel and Eve. Roxas followed close by, holding his own mission list and reading over it. "Guess that leaves just you and me," Axel said, scratching the back of his head. "I figured that I'd need at least some help with something I've gotta do today, and it's an actual mission at that."

"That means me," Eve said. "Today."

"Well, you are the only one who didn't run off to God knows where."

* * *

Demyx played a slow tune on his sitar with few notes as he walked through the dense jungle brush. He really didn't want to be here, but Roman somehow managed to shoehorn him into coming. He rubbed the top of his head, where Roman had grabbed his hair and dragged him with him. He was lucky not to have a bald spot from any ripped hairs, especially considering how he liked to keep his hair.

He passed Roman, continuing his tune, and completely oblivious to what the boy was looking at. He was stopped in his tracks by being grabbed by the hood, abruptly ending his song. "Hey, what gives?" he said, confused and annoyed.

"Dude, get a load of this," Roman said, pointing to a massive imprint in the ground.

The print was as wide as some men would be tall, and some feet deep, filled at what seemed to be the heel with muddy water from a rainstorm that had passed when they had entered the world. It was geometric in nature, like a sort of elongated rhombus with two rectangular prongs coming out the bottom. "Whoa…"

"Wait, whoa, what just happened?" Roman asked, noticing Roxas on the other side of the print. "I thought you were going solo, dude."

"I was going to ask you something similar. I thought you and Demyx were gathering emblems," Roxas said.

"We need to find the damn things. Maybe if we kill something, we'll get lucky."

As if on cue, three Soldiers and two unfamiliar Heartless types appeared. They appeared to be snake-like in origin, bearing fangs like a wolf without the wolf head. Their bodies were a dark purple below red and black stripes near the head, where glaring yellow eyes resided. At the tail was something of a knife blade crossed with the rattler of a rattlesnake, forming a mini-whip of sorts. Perhaps the entirety of the snake was a whip, given this design. After a moment of silence, save for the ambiance of the jungle, Roman's voice cut through the silence, making Demyx jump and fall on his back. "GET THEM!"

With a running start, Roman full-on tackled a Soldier into the brush. Roxas jumped and vertically slashed another, following up with a horizontal right slash and a diagonal upwards strike. He narrowly avoided the knife blade of the new Heartless type, which briefly glinted with a reflection not of his own, but another boy. The blade snapped back to its hissing owner, which coiled up and jumped at Roxas, biting down on the Keyblade and refusing to let go as he tried to shake it off. In the process, he was forced to fend off another Soldier as another of the new Heartless spawned, supported by two Shadows. Roman threw his Soldier out of the brush, and it exploded in midair into purple mist and a signature pink heart. He came out of the brush with a double legged wrestling kick that forced off the snake Heartless bothering Roxas and destroying it. The second thrust its blade at Roman, just scratching his cheek, but giving him enough time to grab it and yank the rest of it towards him. "Yo, what's up?" he said to it as he grabbed by the stripes.

Roxas bisected the third snake as it jumped and missed, and kicked away one Shadow afterwards when it solidified behind him. Roman spun around the blade tail of his snake like a sort of makeshift ball and chain weapon as he faced down a Soldier which shuddered and moved about, trying to make itself as hard to hit as possible. It didn't work. It was soon pierced in the face with the blade of its ally, and yanked towards Roman, who jumped over it to let it crash into a Shadow. He yanked the still-attached Soldier back so hard, it was launched into the air and the blade slipped out of its face as Roxas hit it with a Thunder spell, destroying it. Roman ripped the snake in half, and jumped into the air towards the downed Shadow, delivering a crushing elbow drop, disintegrating it instantly. The remaining Shadow had the misfortune of being kicked like a ball by Roman for the final blow of the current battle. It flew above the top of the treeline and out of sight of both Nobodies. Some distance away, the sound of metal clanging resounded, causing a small flock of birds to take flight.

"Ooh…" Roman said. "That did not sound good." He looked around the small clearing, looking for Demyx, who did nothing in the battle. "Hey. Where'd Demyx go?"

Roxas looked around as well, confused. "Wasn't he with you?"

"Exactly." Under his breath, Roman added, "Well, I didn't exactly ask for him, anyway…"

Out of the corner of his eye, Roman caught sight of a green ring. Turning in its direction, he saw an Organization emblem, with a huge green ring with no signs of running out anytime soon. He never bothered to question why they gave off such rings, and he certainly wasn't about to now. "Enough distractions, then."

* * *

"Must be getting tedious for the higher brass to keep putting out the same assignment, even to different people…" Axel said, looking at the building ahead.

The building had a sort of mystic, castle feel to it, what with the clouds above and the trees that appeared to be more barren the further away they got from the area. To Eve, she could surmise that the architecture was based on somewhere around 19th Century Europe or later, a popular era for various horror stories, such as Frankenstein (she could distinguish between the scientist and the Creature), Dracula, and even one British ("What is that?") comedy based in it. What the assignment Axel was talking about was, she had no clue. It was the first time she had ever heard of it. "Same assignment? Was it failed repeatedly?" she asked.

"Um… you know, that's a good question," Axel replied, scratching his head. "I guess it's debatable, since it started with what Xaldin reported. You know Xaldin, right? Lances, Number III. Got it memorized?"

"I thought that was your line."

"Whatever. Basically, rumor has it that something really powerful and/or nasty is prowling the area. For all we know, it could cause serious issues for the Organization. Our job today is to find it. If we can, we have to assess whether or not it's actually a danger to us."

Eve was thinking that a Heartless would be behind the repeated assignment. She figured it had to be a crafty one, disappearing at the presence of Organization members. However, Shadows and their larger counterparts didn't seem threatening enough for that, nor smart enough. A Neoshadow? No, they weren't much better. Therefore, it had to be a local being. "I think we're the fifth and sixth members to go looking for whatever this is…" Axel said. "First it was Xaldin, and he still makes rounds. The other three are Roxas, Xion and Roman. I bet that if we can't find it, no one can."

"Probably."

Axel looked down at his young, temporary protégé. She seemed distracted by the sheer look of the place, but that wasn't the only cause for her lack of words. "You know, you should speak up more," he said to her. "You can't go around talking like the world's most intelligent zombie or something. Trust me. If Roxas can't pull it off, then you sure can't."

She followed his lead further in, momentarily wincing at a slight pain in her right arm. She put a hand to it, and saw nothing when she took it off. Still, the slight soreness might be a distraction, she thought.

* * *

One of Roman's many debatably notorious habits was to be stuck in mid-grab for something when anything of grandeur or out of the ordinary was within sight. In this situation, his arm was in mid-grab for an emblem with both he and Roxas caught sight of a giant.

Through two windows of building in a sort of military installation they had wandered into, following the green rings of emblems, they saw a giant metal machine, holding something resembling an Uzi. It walked across the road, possibly patrolling the area. Further down the road, another similar to it did the same, but with a shotgun and some armored plating on its right shoulder. Neither were, by any means, organic looking, but this seemed to catch Roman's attention more. "Whoa."

The closest machine took the magazine of its Uzi out and checked it. Neither boy saw it, but it had a full clip. The magazine was re-inserted and the weapon itself appeared to be placed on the machine's leg. "Whoa."

It crouched down, as if to look at something on the ground. It stopped moving, then steam (or was it smoke?) hissed out from around its chest. A section of it pushed out and rose up, obscuring the head like a mask. Two other sections beside it moved away and back, making something of a large hole overall in the machine. Sitting in a seat was a blonde girl wearing khaki clothing and a "Scott Pilgrim" cap, also khaki for whatever reason. She sighed and fanned herself with her cap for a moment before producing a clip board and pencil from the side of her seat. If Roxas and Roman were close enough, they would have heard her say, "Diagnostics check, okay. The new engine works like a charm. Considered for puppet production. On a side note…"

She took out, of all things, an emblem, with its green ring quickly fading. "Purpose of the unknown object, still unknown. I should have figured that putting it in a wanzer wouldn't do much good, especially as a decoration."

"Wah—"

* * *

"What, did you find a walled area?"

Eve had tried to walk through a door to see what was in there when; A, it wouldn't open; and B, she ran facefirst into it. She nursed her face with both hands as Axel walked next to her and saw the glowing vines going across the door she tried to go through. "Did Roman ever talk about those at all? Those mean that we're not allowed to go in there," he said to her. "It's common sense, really, I mean, hello? Big, menacing X?"

"I thought I saw at least one in Innocent Europe…"

"So he didn't elaborate? Or Roxas?" Axel said. Looking around the hallway they were in, he added, "If they're walling off areas like this on a search assignment, that means that they've narrowed it down to some select rooms. Thing is, how many rooms did they wall off?"

He had a point. Provided the fact that, in accordance with the name, the building was a school, there could be countless rooms that the supposed hazard could be. The fact that this was Eve's first time on the assignment, and perhaps last, didn't help matters at all, however. What didn't help even further was a soft, low growling noise nearby. "That wasn't me, was it?" Axel asked, one chakram out.

Eve shook her head as the growling continued in short bursts. She looked through the window of the room she tried to enter, and saw an analog wall clock within sight. The hands indicated somewhere around 11 AM, and there was no one inside. Another growl, and Eve felt small vibrations around her stomach area. She lightly put a hand to that particular area to get a better feel. She definitely wasn't imagining it. "Oh no, no, no no no…"

A girl on the floor below them was running besides a tiny brown bat to their right. The girl had unique brown-orange hair tied in twin pigtails and wore a school sailor suit with maroon as the primary color, with knee socks and plaid hair ties. "Why the crap is the cafeteria so far out!" she complained to herself as she ran, apparently not noticing that she had knocked a Bad Dog up to Axel and Eve's level, dazed. "Does that Mizore girl have a private transit system in the school?"

"Well, there's your problem. Lunch."

Eve's stomach gave a respondant growl as she licked her lips and sighed afterwards. "Well, we're not done yet, so we're just going to have to follow that girl's lead," Axel said, kicking the Bad Dog off the edge.

"The faster, the better," Eve said without thinking.

"Now, that's the attitude! When we get there, I'll have to tell you about the fine art of nabbing food on-site."

* * *

"Is it, like, somebody's Frisbee?" Emma said to herself, holding the odd emblem that she had found earlier in the day.

She had found it inside the bunker, just suspended in mid-air next to some containers of wanzer parts. Lately, reports of strange creatures had been popping up all over radio transmissions, some going so far as to describe them disrupting OCU and UCS skirmishes. In spite of the repeated interruptions, there was enough bad blood to keep the war over Huffman Island going. Such creatures were guarding the emblem when she first found it, so she had to call guards to dispatch them.

Emma turned the object around in her hand, getting different angles of it in the sunlight. Every now and then, a green ring of light would emerge and grow. At some points, it would begin to recede. What purpose the ring was intended for was beyond her. "I wonder if it actually is…"

Taking a chance, she threw it forward, past one of the odd elongated warehouses. She wasn't a newbie with Frisbees, since she had one back home which she tossed to her dog. Here on Huffman, she just used cardboard targets to throw the discs at. What amazed her wasn't how the emblem flew without curving from the wind, but the fact that somebody nabbed it out of the air. Faintly, she heard somebody say, "Pay up."

"Wallace?" Emma called out. "Just because you're gay, doesn't give you the right to keep bothering me!"

Someone called back, "What did the girl say?"

The owner of the voice was whacked by a blunt object, indicated by a smack followed by a yelp. _Oh no… they found us!_

"C-Code red! Code red!" she shouted into a radio attached to her wanzer's seat. "Foxes in the chicken house!"

Climbing in, she activated the controls and closed the cockpit up. Screens blinked to life before her as cameras reactivated to give her a scan of the area.

"You had to. You HAD to?" Roxas said accusingly, waving the Keyblade at his partner.

"The girl accused you, me, or both of us of being gay!" Roman said in his defense. "Nobody gets away with that!"

"But she's got a giant robot… thing! Now they're on to us!"

Pulling Roxas by the robes away from the corner of the building, Roman said, "They didn't see anything, so 'stifu" and RUN!"

* * *

"We've got bigger problems, actually!" a voice crackled over the radio. "Some giant, gravity defying armor just showed up in the armory and brought some little guys with it! It's a bloodbath in here!"

"What! What do you mean, a gravity defying armor?"

"Just get your rear in here and see!"

The sound of crashing backed up her ally's claims. She turned her wanzer towards the armory and brought it to run forward, each step thudding against the paved road as it went.

* * *

Roman and Roxas peeked their heads around the corner of the building to see the machine run off towards a larger building with its doors open. Some kind of commotion was going on inside, apparently. "Question. What just happened?" Roman asked, confused.

"Must you question it? We need to get out of here, now! We've got all the emblems," Roxas said. "Why I'm saying it, and not you, is a wonder."

At that moment when Roxas ended his sentence, Demyx ran beside him, panting and holding his sitar. "So… what'd I miss?" he asked.

Roman let out an angry huff and slowly turned to face Demyx, a glare on his face. Demyx chuckled nervously as his younger compatriot caught sight of a nearby rock. He quickly took it in his hand and tossed it slightly into the air once before clocking Demyx over the head with it. The look on his face as he fell to the ground would be considered priceless by Xigbar and Axel later, as his eyes crossed upwards, and his tongue stuck out the side. "I'm the one carrying him, aren't I?" Roxas asked.

"Sadly, yes," Roman said, turned away from Demyx with his arms crossed. "I, on the other hand, am going to take a look over there…"

"You're the devil."

* * *

There were definitely more students than Axel had originally planned for. With all the uniforms with a few exceptions here and there, he would most definitely stand out. "Well then… this is a problem," he stated. "Looks like we can't just slip in. Or rather…" he looked at Eve, her stomach still lightly growling. "I can't just slip in."

Eve looked up at him, wondering what the rest of the plan was going to be. "Since you look young enough, it looks like you're going alone," Axel continued. "Just be careful, alright? Oh, and I don't really care what you get me. Whatever looks good to you. Still, there are some pointers I want to give you. First off, don't cut the line if there is one. Somebody might notice you're different from the surrounding populace. Second, I wouldn't strike up a conversation with anyone. There are eavesdroppers working with local authorities, and we've been lucky not to have any cops or something similar on our cases up to now. Last one, I'll get to when you've got the food. Got it all memorized?"

"I think so…" Eve said.

"Well then, get on in there!"

* * *

The lunches at Youkai were remarkably normal lately. There was Mexican food yesterday (something Yukari had come to despise lately), and today involved various sandwiches. Still, that didn't prevent some students from ordering odd ingredients that neither Terra nor Tsukune could be bothered to try to figure out. Youkai Academy was a school for monsters, and Tsukune was confirmed to be the odd one out.

The problem other than odd ingredients today with the sandwiches was the fact that it seemed like there were more voices than there were students in the cafeteria. Oddly enough, no one seemed to mind the occasional screaming, shouting, and for reasons beyond Terra, preaching. She looked at her own sandwich, a half submarine with tomatoes, lettuce, ham, onions, mayo and other condiments, wondering if the extra voices had anything to do with it. Looking behind her, she saw that the line had receded in length, meaning that everyone with this particular lunch was here. She was lucky to be one of the first ones in, or else she would have been stuck for half of lunch just waiting, something that didn't do good things for her radio voice, which she would need later on.

There was an unfamiliar blonde girl somewhere near the front of the line. It was hard to see her outfit beyond her golden hair, which was moreso than Terra's own faded hue. Frankly, there was an unusual deficiency of blondes in Youkai, so she herself stood out in her first days simply for having blonde hair, though no one made jokes to her relief. As the line moved on, the new girl looked from side to side, waiting for her turn to get her food. Terra caught her magenta eyes as she looked, and saw that her clothing was black. Also, she had a piece of paper clutched in her hand lightly. "So we've got another one?"

Terra saw that Kokoa had joined her at her table, along with Batty on her shoulder. On her tray was a sort of pastrami sandwich with two olives on toothpicks on top. "I would figure so," Terra said. "Has anyone else really noticed?"

"You mean, as in the News Club?" Kokoa asked. "No, no one's seen a new blonde girl. They were talking about a blonde boy with two other friends about a month back or so, but he hasn't been seen since. By the way, what was all that about yesterday with this monster porcu-"

"N-Next subject!" Terra quickly said, waving her hand, clearly wanting to avoid the previous day's events.

Kokoa just stared at the other girl for a moment, a little confused as to what just happened.

* * *

"The universe unfolds before me!"

Eve gasped and dropped her tray on the railing. She could have sworn that the sandwich just spoke, complete with parts of it moving to simulate lip movement. The woman behind the register said, "Don't worry, we've been getting a lot of those lately. Anyway, what's your number? Or do you have money?"

Munny. She kept some from her previous mission with Roxas, and she didn't know what this number the woman had mentioned was for. She reached into her pocket and took out a couple of small yellow and blue orbs, followed by a larger one, setting all three on the counter. "Literally, apparently," the woman said.

Taking her tray (and the now complaining sandwich, with another wrapped up), Eve was careful not to have any reason to stick the page in her hand back into her pocket for any reason, as per Zexion's directions. Therefore, she had to keep it under the tray as she navigated her way back to the cafeteria doors. There was a shriek somewhere behind her, making her stop and look for a moment. The girl from before was running through a new, unfamiliar snake Heartless with a rapier, as she recognized it. Slowly, Eve began on her way again, wondering how the girl came across her weapon.

* * *

While Roxas was taking Demyx's unconscious body back to the corridor, Roman was well on his way to the large warehouse-looking building back on the military installation. _What's the scare for them to call in the heavy stuff?_ He thought. _Oh. Holy shit._

One of the machines from earlier was doing battle with a Guard Armor, dodging claw strikes and firing back with its shotgun. Few of the spreading pellets hit as the machine loaded another slug into its gun. The other, the one piloted by the girl from earlier, had managed to get itself a sort of giant knuckle of sorts, and was punching a claw into twisted shapes. In its other hand, it filled a leg locked down by its own leg with lead. One of the infantry had the smart idea to toss a grenade at the Armor, which bounced harmlessly off. Roman was compelled to tell the man, "Toss to get it IN, dude!" but resisted, since he was still running a stealth operation.

The second machine blocked a kick from the remaining leg with the armor on its shoulder and managed to close in with thudding steps. When it was within range, a loud boom resounded throughout the warehouse, causing Roman's ears to ring for two seconds. The next thing he knew, there was a huge gaping hole in the leg. The remaining claw and body started its trademark spin attack, reflecting small arms fire and forcing the robots back from its attack range. Things began to go downhill as it slowly started towards the doors… right towards Roman. "Oh, fuck me—AGH!"

The Armor had gotten a sudden burst of speed that Roman had to jump out of the way of to avoid being slashed. He sat back up and watched as the girl's robot made its way out to chase after it. "I know I should be getting out of here, but this is just too friggin' awesome!" he said to himself, sitting cross-legged.

When the Armor stopped its spin, it immediately shot a claw out at its pursuer, who promptly grabbed it out of the air. Holding it with a reverse grip, it kept closing in with the Armor unable to make a quick escape. The battle was over already, even as its own claw was jammed into it, and was thrust upwards, knocking the head sky-high. "Oh, come on!" Roman shouted. "Why didn't I think of that!"

His answer was brought about by the head landing right next to him. "Oh… that is not a normal size for Armor heads."

He stood up, making his own mark on the head by fire-punching it, and walking past. To the girl's robot, he called out, "So… yeah. You wanna get dinner somewhere this week? I totally understand if you don't! We just met, and I'm viewed as an enemy of whatever state you come from, so I don't blame you for hating on me! My bad!"

Behind Roman, a new dark portal had formed, and Roxas had to grab him from behind to pull him in. "Get over here, man!"

This is one sneak attack Roman couldn't skirt.

* * *

_What are those two doing down there? And who are they?_

The rooftops of the buildings are where Kokoa went either to blow some steam off or simply to relax for whatever reason (or lack thereof). They also provided the benefit of her being the eye in the sky in some situations, such as now, as she was looking down on two robed figures, one with their hood up. A month ago, she did hear the rest of the News Club talking about how creatures had shown up outside the school, and robed strangers helped them out. Of them, only one had their hood up.

The figures looked like they had settled down to eat something. The man with spiky red hair jumped and dropped a sandwich as if though there was something in it. In circles of flame, he materialized two weapons Kokoa couldn't see clearly from her angle. She could hear indistinct talking below as the man settled down after being reassured of something. The next thing she knew, there was screaming.

* * *

"No, not Terrence!"

Eve heeded not the words of Axel's sandwich, as she took another bite of hers, which continued screaming. "No, no, what are you doing!" Axel's sandwich continued.

Eve bit down hard on her sandwich, causing sauce to spurt out the other end where her mouth wasn't. "Well, aren't YOU a carnivore?" Axel said.

Muffled, Eve tried to say something that Axel couldn't understand, pointing to her mouth. "What terrible injustice have you imposed on both our worlds?" his sandwich asked. "For what reason would you put our entire universe into jeopar—OW! Oh God!"

"Just trying to avoid an argument," Axel said after swallowing.

"They don't carry them, anyway," a new voice said.

In front of a window was the girl from before, with her little bat on her shoulder like a sort of parrot. Her emerald green eyes were in sight as she walked over to the two Nobodies and their talking sandwiches. "I'm glad I didn't get one of the talking ones, like you two did," she continued.

"And… who are you?" Axel asked.

"No, you," the girl retorted with her hands on her hips.

"Sorry, but we're obligated NOT to tell you anything, thanks. Security issue where we come from."

"Well, we're NOT wherever you're from, so you two better talk," the girl said, adamant.

Axel stood up, tossing his sandwich over the edge and his shoulder, standing taller than the new girl. "The girl here is under my watch, and I'm older than you," he said. "I'm thinking that you don't have much respect for your elders."

"Foreigner!" the girl called. "That doesn't count!"

"Oh, yes it does!"

"Really? Okay then, talk to Batty here!"

Of all the strange things today that Eve had seen, none was more bizarre than the sight of a tiny bat morphing into a giant spiked mace. With just one arm, she held it up to Axel as he materialized his chakrams, ready for anything from there. "Your bat transforms…?" Eve asked softly, just enough for Kokoa to pick up.

"Excuse me?"

The blonde girl wrapped up her sandwich and left it next to where she had been sitting. "Having something else transform for you…" she said. "It doesn't…"

"Doesn't… what?" the other girl said, putting her weapon down and putting her free hand on her hip.

"It doesn't seem very… appealing."

Axel put a hand to his face in disbelief. "Oh no…"

"Not appealing?" the girl asked, appalled. "NOT APPEALING!" Lifting her weapon at Eve, she continued, "Okay, listen here, missy! Batty is a loyal friend of mine, and no one's going to bad-mouth him in any way—"

Instinctively, Eve focused in transforming her hand into a shield. With concentration, she was able to produce something that one would never think her one hand would be able to produce, with a handle in back for her other hand to hold for stability. The brunette(?) was taken aback by this sudden transformation. "Wh-What the hell! ?" she shrieked.

"If you're me," Eve continued. "You ARE the variable weapon. You're always armed!"

"Yeah… Big deal!"

The girl took a massive swing at Eve's shield, knocking it against her and sending her over the edge. Axel called out to her and tried to jump down, but was stopped by a hexagonal barrier that the girl was somehow able to phase through without any problems. Miraculously, Eve landed on both feet, though she look a little rattled as her shield hand reverted to its normal state. In its place, she focused on forming a broadsword, similar to the one she had heard of Saix using. Upon formation, she pointed it forward in a challenging manner (unintentionally) at the girl, whose weapon was churning and flowing, its spikes receding. "Well then, if you're the weapon…" Now she was holding a metal hammer with both arms, and put it forth. "That means you're the one I'm gonna break!"

This is definitely not what Eve intended to start.

* * *

Kokoa opened the battle with downward smashes turning to sideways swipes, which were devastating, but easy for the robed girl to dodge. There were also jumping attacks in the mix, one of which hit and send the other girl flying and on her back. Batty being a hammer provided an excellent defense, frequently stopping the hand-weapons that came at her in their tracks and provided an opening big enough to fit a quick roundhouse spin. However, the girl soon figured out Kokoa's game and played a defensive tactic, striking after her sideways swipe with devastating force.

The vampire girl knew she had to change her own game to get the upper hand, so she mixed it up with a spinning two-hit attack followed with an upwards swing and smashing the ground hard enough to cause pieces of earth to shoot up. She also had Batty turn back into his mace form, hoping the spikes would deal extra damage. Her jumping attack at this point actually broke the girl's guard, allowing her to strike with a vengeance. The other girl was able to gain some distance from Kokoa, however, when she missed an extra-powerful jump attack, and tossed a glowing translucent orb in the air. A second later, and a slew of bubbles and a faint green mist came over her, healing some wounds and scrapes inflicted. "Okay, that's it!" Kokoa shrieked as Batty shifted into a double-bladed naginata.

Spinning her new weapon above her head, she was able to form a lethal twister that the robed girl retreated from in order to avoid the suction. Kokoa threw the naginata at the girl, spinning towards her without the suction, but all the lethality. She jumped out of the way once as Batty spun towards her, then jumped over gracefully with an acrobatic flip when he turned around for another approach. Kokoa caught her pet as the girl formed the broadsword from earlier from her hand. _This next shot will end it!_ Kokoa thought as the prepared for a forward thrust, as her opponent raised her sword up for a vertical slash, the perfect opening. Just then, a ring of electricity formed around the tip of the other girl's sword…

* * *

A bolt of lightning suddenly cracked from the sky without warning. It flashed downwards and struck the girl's weapon, knocking it out of her hands and to the ground, where it shifted back into a tiny bat and plopped right down, twitching and with spirals in its eyes. Eve gasped and stopped in her tracks, lowering her weapon and letting hit the ground. "What… what was THAT?" the brunette girl asked.

There was no way Eve could reply, because she was thinking the same question. A sudden jolt, not of electricity, ran through her body, starting at her very core. She could feel her entire body pulse and her breathing began to rattle as her brain swam, trying to figure out what was the problem. With no warning, there was a strange tingling sensation in her right arm, where she had made a broadsword of her hand. The blade itself began to recede, but not for a good reason, as the prickling sensation in her arm intensified. She gripped her arm as the sword receded to the length of a knife against her will, and some small, off-color bumps started to form on her skin.

Axel, still stuck above, bore witness to this, and couldn't believe what was going on before his eyes. From the bumps, various bladed weapons started to form in abbreviated lengths, and Eve's eyes went wide at the sight, her breathing going up in pace to borderline hyperventilation. A spearhead here, a military combat knife there, and some indefinable cone weapon as well. Overall, Eve's right arm had become a non-bloody, yet grotesque sight of random weapons that moved as if though they themselves could breathe. The girl was frozen to the spot, casting a blank gaze of horror at what she had become.

The other girl tended to her bat and backed away fearfully, in spite of Eve's disabled condition. "So…" she shuddered. "Being the weapon is an advantage?"

"I don't know…" Eve said, backing away herself. "It's not really painful… but I… can't control it!"

She shook her weaponized arm once, resulting in a cacophony of clatters and clangs. The brunette cringed at the sight and sound, horrified at whatever would be left underneath if Eve ever recovered from whatever she had come down with. Axel also shuddered as he placed a chakram against the barrier and gathered up a large amount of energy in his hand. With a yell, he released it in a blazing sideways pillar, sending pieces of the invisible barrier flying and down into the makeshift arena. He managed to make a hole large enough for him to jump through and promptly ran to Eve's side, supporting the shocked girl. "A-Axel…" she whispered desperately, not looking up at him.

"Hang on," he said, opening a dark portal while the other girl wasn't looking because her bat wasn't readily responding to anything.

The two walked through into the dark corridor with Eve's left arm on Axel for support, and the portal closed before the brunette could even notice they were gone. Inside the corridor, they caught sight of the other three Nobodies they had departed with earlier in the day. For some reason, Roxas was practically dragging an inert Demyx and was chatting away about something with Roman. When the two turned around, a smile and a look of disappointment, respectively, turned to shock.

* * *

"Hey! There's something wrong with Eve!"

At that moment, Saix had just walked into the Grey Area as the five departed Nobodies entered. He and Vexen to its left side looked to find that Eve's arm had turned to some bizarre abomination of blades. Saix cast an angry glare while Vexen merely looked on with inquisition. The girl was hyperventilating as she gripped her inflicted arm, careful not to cut herself on any of the breathing weapons, no one of them alike. "Does it hurt?" was Vexen's first question, and it was met with a scornful look from Saix.

Amazingly, Eve shook her head and replied, "Not much. But… I didn't want all this to happen-!"

"We got caught and she confronted the eavesdropper when this happened," Axel said, pointing to the blades, which seemed to slow their movements.

"Were you focusing your energy on the fight?" Vexen asked Eve.

The girl nodded and began to calm down, her breathing regulating and the weapons continuing to slow. "Hm… intriguing…"

As Eve collected herself, the weapons began to recede into her skin with each breath. It was a disgusting sight, one that Roman was feeling woozy from, but Eve didn't show signs of disgust. Within moments, her arm was back to normal, as if though nothing had ever happened. She herself gazed at her now normal arm with wonder, as did the younger Nobodies present, which is to say all but Xion, who was absent. "So that's where that extra component came from…" Vexen said to himself, not at all concerned about what was going on. "Eve, can you remember your thoughts from the battle?"

She remembered being determined to give her all and show Axel that she was capable of doing missions with the rest of the Organization, and that she had done plenty of damage to her opponent, which she didn't take any care in describing. She also told Vexen of the random lightning bolt from the sky that technically ended the fight. "Very well. Everyone, this is not a technical fault!" Vexen announced. "This is a new form of power that she herself unlocked from one of… my mistakes. A replicated piece of an important component of the experimental Vanguard Gauntlets that Roman is in charge of ended up in a formula of the immunity shot I gave her earlier this morning, resulting in this. We will have to program the appropriate training exercises for her own sake."

Saix didn't look like he believed him at all. He only looked down at Eve with what looked like disdain and walked off without any further words. Axel followed after him, saying to Roxas, "I think I better find out what's biting him."

* * *

"He has gone far enough with these ridiculous experiments," Saix said.

His gaze was adamant on this statement, and Axel knew it. "But she said it didn't hurt much. She even told me on the spot," he retorted. "For all we know, Vexen is right, and she could be able to actually USE it to her advantage."

"Using that… thing effectively? Preposterous."

"You never know, right? Look at how Xion's doing. You thought she wasn't going to be much help, but she is now! Granted, Roman's made the girl a little irritable for some reason—"

"Again. Preposterous. She is merely a puppet, and I'm getting tired of having to restate this fact to you."

He had a point. Saix was always intent on referring to Xion as a puppet, a fact that bothered Axel to no end. She was as real as anyone, and who could deny it if they aren't there to see it? "Her failures, this… whatever you want to call it. And by that, I mean the other girl…" Saix continued. "This is simply too much for the Organization to rightfully deal with. First things first."

"Take out Vexen," Axel said.

"At some point, I will assign the two of you a mission to a particularly high-hazard world in a high-hazard area. His destruction will be masked as a loss to a powerful local to the other members. Xemnas's suggestion."

Axel looked away at the statement. A cover-up orchestrated by the superior himself was bound to be trouble for somebody.

* * *

Roxas and Xion were the first two up on the clock tower this day. She, however, didn't seem particularly keen to start a conversation of any kind. He waited for Roman to come by with the ice cream, but seeing Xion as she did bothered him. "Hey… so…" he said nervously, trying not to come off as awkward. "Before Roman tells you some dirty lie… we saw a… cute girl in Huffman Island."

She looked at him and laughed a little, softly, and put her head on her knees, facing him. "Was she?" she asked with a small smile.

"Just… don't tell anyone, okay? And I mean, don't tell Axel."

"You know me."

"Well, well," Axel said from around the corner. "Aren't you Casanova or something? I don't think they'll allow dating."

"That's not true! Who told you?"

"Roman, duh."

"That gossipy bitch…"

Roman poked his head out from around the corner, with the awaited ice cream held underneath. "I tell it like a reporter, dude," he said.

"Roman!"

"Fine, see if I ever get you guys ice cream again…" he muttered as he took his seat behind the others.

The ensuing conversation mainly involved him, Roxas and Axel pestering each other about the girl on Huffman. Axel teased about how she could sic her giant robot on them if they pissed her off, and that she's a girl that takes charge. Oddly enough, the conversation eventually moved on to women's driving habits. Xion seemed distant from the three of them, not paying attention to anything save for what was on her mind, making a newcomer's entrance that much more unnoticed.

"So, what do you guys think?" Axel asked. "Next vacation, we try to hit the beach?"

"Sounds like a plan," Roman said.

Roxas looked at Xion, who was gazing off into the distance, thinking about something. "I think it might help," he said. "It'll be something different, and it might just help me remember a little about my human life."

"I've never been there…"

Eve's sudden appearance startled those paying attention to everything up to that point. Roman hadn't planned on her coming up, so he hadn't bought extra ice cream. He planned on taking Xion's, but she finished it. "Uh… yeah," Roman said. "I hear that the waters are cold as hell this time of year, though."

"Eh, we'll just find a place that's unusually warm," Axel suggested.

"So it's a plan," Roxas said. "We'll go to the beach next vacation we get."

* * *

[New Heartless]: Rope Stinger

Whoever said "Red next to black is a friendly Jack" is an idiot. These things not only sport venomous fangs, but a rattler of knife blades. It can use itself to stab you like a whip, so when it coils up, you had best put up your guard. You can also grab these nasty buggers if they whiff when they bite and use them for your own gain.

* * *

[Author's Notes]

- Okay… so maybe writing both Eve's and Roman's missions in one chapter wasn't such a good idea. On Word, this thing hit 17 pages on Calibri 11 point font. Maybe the next chapter will be, as far as one-point perspective, more merciful, because it's something completely different: "Interlude Investigation."

- Can you spot the Scott Pilgrim references strewn throughout this chapter? Comics and movie allowed.

- Note that now Xion's acting like she isn't feeling well. I want to get to a certain plot point before my 3rd report card (by the time I'm writing this).


	6. Interlude Investigation

Friday, December 31. It had gotten usually warm for an after-Christmas day, but such weather patterns aren't so unusual in this city. We've had white weeks in summer, and the snow wasn't even cold, yet you could still make solid snowmen out of them. The warmth of this day allowed me a formal dress for the occasion, a black, close fitting dress, and short heels that were definitely eye catching, though only for their height (or lack thereof).

I stepped out of the car and into the night air, filled with people chatting away as they waited in line for a rather unusual play that a colleague of mine bought tickets for, one that involved two armies fighting a faux war that was actually intended to train a legion of expert soldiers. For the life of me, I really had to see it to believe it, because I had a hard time trying to grasp the fact that it was intended to be a comedy in a humorous sense. That was just one reason why I decided to take up his offer. Another was the fact that I needed a break from the inundation of missing persons reports that had hit the department. At the time, I wanted no part in them. I was, and still technically am, only a rookie in the police force.

I decided to take my sidearm, a Smith-And-Wesson .38 revolver (with some spare rounds), and a stun gun with me to the play, because being a small and attractive woman like myself, you never know when somebody of either sex is going to get ideas. At first, I didn't need them: my colleague was already there and he was capable of holding his own in many situations. When the play began, I just tried to enjoy myself as the first act involved, of all things, one army's tank shooting one of their own men. A rather bizarre way to begin the New Year, really and it only got stranger from there.

For one, halfway into the second act, involving high-pitched people who were technically immortal, I noticed that the shadows of the walkways around the seating actually started to churn a little. When I first saw this phenomenon, I didn't pay much attention to it. My attention was caught, however, when I saw some sort of shape rise forth, keeping low to the ground throughout. It bore yellow glowing eyes and two antennae on its head, like some form of ant. It did a quick sweep of the area, as if it were checking the crowd size, before melding back into the ground, completely flat, and it eyes still looking upwards as it slid out of sight. Being towards the end of my row allowed me a clearer view of this as I caught more movement among the shadows, and more yellow eyes looking around the theatre. I tapped my colleague on the shoulder and pointed him towards the creatures, who were melting into the ground when he looked. Neither of us knew exactly what to make of it.

I kept a wary eye on the audience from there, watching for any signs of strange movement from there, a typical police habit I already picked up. Witness reports did mention odd creatures affiliated with darkness, so these must have been it. What got me worried was the fact that they were appearing in a public place with hundreds of people, actors included. At the end of the second act, with a time-altering explosion enacted out, people began to murmur in my row. When I looked down it, I noticed that a few people were missing entirely. No one had to be excused, and it seemed that some of the actors onstage were distracted by something from those now empty seats. One in orange armor actually said, "Hey, uh, Simmons? Is the war actually over? Because I'm seeing some sort of… flare."

"No, that's not your line!" his current conversation partner said, in a sort of maroon armor. "I appreciate staying in character, but—"

I decided to look up, myself. There was a glowing object in the sky above one of the empty seats, and it was rotating. It appeared to be some sort of jewel at first sight, but when I took a closer look, it was more of a cartoon heart. "Oh," the actor said.

I was barely able to manage, "What the…?" when the heart-jewel disappeared in a dark bubble. "Um… never mind. It's not a flare," the other actor said.

"Oh, real smooth, Geoff."

In an instant, orbs of darkness formed in the air and on the ground to reveal new creatures, some large and rotund, some smaller with claws and helmets, and some looking like yellow pistachio shells, frankly. The audience was thrown into instant panic with two words shouted by the on-stage actors; "Son of a bitch!"

Chaos enveloped the room as people screamed and ran for the exits, whether in the back of the auditorium or through the backstage, as the actors did as they avoided attacks from the aerial creatures. I was knocked to the ground by people scrambling to get out of my row, and my colleague managed to get swept up in the madness of the crowd, being involuntarily carried out the door. The creatures weren't helping, especially when people appeared to literally vanish when they were struck by some. The large ones swiped their fists, knocking some people sideways, and others into shards of light that vanished after releasing more of the heart-jewels I had seen earlier. Claws sank themselves into people's chests, pulling out hearts and letting them disappear in dark orbs before the victims' bodies dissolved without a trace. I turned behind me from one such sight only to meet the eyes of one of the smaller creatures I had seen earlier. It reared back to slash out with its own, less lethal looking claws, but I rolled out of the way, nearly hitting a seat in the process. I searched my purse for either my pistol or my stun gun, either seeming appropriate for this situation, but as it turned out, a few remaining people did my job for me, trampling the creature into a momentary dark cloud. Similar things happened to creatures further back in the auditorium, crushed by people desperately trying to escape.

I had my work cut out for me, because I still had a few of the claw creatures, and two large ones, and only my pistol and stun gun to deal with them. Taking the former out of my purse, I took aim at the closest one, a claw, and fired off a round which bounced off its helmet and knocking it back a little. The ricochet actually managed to get another creature in the helmet as it was running up the aisle, actually causing it to fall over, but I didn't plan to count my lucky stars for such events. I still had my first target to deal with, and the large bodies were starting to close in on me. I made a ran for the stage, pushing my current target into the seating to my right, and past one of the last actors (in pink armor), who was screaming like a woman. It was a bit difficult to get up there, as I still had my dress and heels on, and I had to keep my pistol and stun gun with me as well. When I did get up, I looked across the now absent audience, with only three small creatures, two big ones, and three flyers after me. In total, I had 12 rounds and two high-power shocks to counter them. This was going to be a doozy, I thought.

First, the flyers took dives at me that I was able to merely sidestep, but barely by a hair at most. In the corner of my eye, I spotted an abandoned police baton on the ground, possibly dropped by one of the actors who had run out, though why it was there, I'll never know. I didn't question its presence, as it gave me a method of fighting back when I ran out of ammunition, which started when I shot down two of the flyers with four rounds, two each. The other merely flitted about, looking back and forth as I reloaded my gun and kept an eye on the remaining creatures, who were starting their advance towards the stage. I used a fake rock as cover as the remaining flyer attempted to dive right at me, but ended up with its beak in the prop, allowing me to score a point-blank shot at the head. One of the claw creatures had jumped onto the stage next, the one I had initially shot. It flung itself forward with an axel kick that knocked me into the backdrop of a forest with rocks throughout, which rattled and shook when I hit it. Shaking off the dizziness, I was able to get a lucky shot into the visor of the creature, causing to rock back its head before falling to the ground and exploding into a purple and black mist which soon dissipated.

Another claw creature had jumped onto the stage, this time opening with a spinning kick that I had to jump back from as I planted three rounds into its back, followed by a strike from the baton for good measure. Without warning, I was grabbed from behind by black hands with red claws, one of the creatures. Let me point this out: as an attractive woman, I don't take kindly to being unexpectedly grabbed, so I slapped the creature without thinking, sending off the stage when it tripped on a ground light. At the moment, one of the large ones crashed onto the stage from above, without me knowing, so I was knocked to my feet by the blast. From the ground, I quickly regained my bearings and shot directly at it twice. Nothing. The bullets bounced right off without any damage whatsoever. It slapped its belly once and ran at me faster than I had expected, as I was sent through the backdrop and backstage, landing with a thud on my back. I struggled to stand as the other large creature jumped onstage, but not from above with a terrible shock as its compatriot. I checked my gun to see that I had but one bullet left, which didn't seem enough at all for two of these massive creatures, especially since straightforward shooting wouldn't do. The one closest to me turned away and started walking, as if to get around the set, giving me an opportunity to try something. I fired my last round at its back, and it reacted accordingly, lurching forward and with a bullet hole that smoked a purple mist.

The large creature was stupider than I thought, as it continued on its way, leading the way for the other one around the set and towards me, as I stood up with my stun gun on hand. I figured that I could at least eliminate one by focusing the shock at the bullet hole I left then making a run for it through the back door, wherever it was. As the first creature rounded the corner, I backed up, making sure that I would have enough room to dodge whatever it was going to do first, which was a charge as before. This time, I rolled out of the way as the attack missed by a long shot in comparison to my previous dodges. It seemed dumbstruck as it scratched its head and looked around and above, when it should have been looking behind itself for me. I made sure to focus the bullet hole between the prongs of the stun gun as I hit the switch, hoping my plan would work. As it turned out, it did, as it shook violently with its arms out and electricity actually enveloped it like some sort of cartoon, sans the skeleton for whatever reason, followed by it exploding and leaving behind small green orbs. I merely moved close to them, and they spiraled around me and seemed to melt right into my scratches and wounds, closing and mending them painlessly. However, I still had the other creature to deal with, as a looming shadow reminded me.

"Fire in the hole!"

_Oh no…_ I thought. _He's not seriously going to—_

The creature just HAD to look as a rocket flew into its head, blowing it off entirely without any pieces. It stood for a moment before it fell backwards, exploding when it hit the floor. I waved off the smoke from the explosion, surprised it didn't kill me, and even more surprised that it hadn't killed the one who fired the rocket in the first place. "Were there more when you started, Aya?" that unmistakable voice said.

Its owner gave me a wide grin from across the room as he scratched the back of his head, his oversized rocket launcher leaning against him. "You could have killed me…" I said to him, wanting to hit him more than hug him.

"Well, these rockets are more of the 'explode to get the target' as opposed to 'the target and everything around it,'" he assured me as I moved towards him. "I… didn't ruin your night, did I?"

"No… but…"

Taking the baton in my hand, I hit my superior squarely on the head with it. "Learn to use a sniper… it's generally safer for long distances…"

Normally, this would be grounds for demotion or some reprimandation, as you would expect. Not with Ryotsu Kankichi, no sir. If anything, I put him through as much abuse as the criminals on the streets. When I joined the force, I was placed under him to learn the ropes and such, firing practice, and patrolling. What I got instead was an additional daycare training, because this man… this one man… is the most childish man I've ever met while still being a good cop (and somehow, a good mentor) that goes above and beyond the call of duty. How he does it while obsessing with get-rich-quick schemes and the latest toys and technology is far beyond me. "No need to hit me like that…" he said.

"Well, I was lucky you loaded that particular rocket, because I was planning on making a run for it, since I already took care of most of them," I said, nursing a lingering bruise on my back.

"That means if there're any more of them left," he hoisted his weapon onto his shoulder with one hand and flashed a wide grin, "I'll get 'em for you!"

I couldn't help but smile. The man's bravado is partially how he got his status in the department, aside from other factors. "Well… some of the crowd managed to escape, along with all of the cast and most of the stagehands," Ryotsu said as we made our way out. "So… I hate to be morbid, but where're the bodies?"

"I saw how these things kill," I answered, "And it seems like that leaving no initial evidence is their game. Victims disappear upon death, and all that's really left is this sort of… jewel thing that vanishes after a while."

He raised an eyebrow at me and I rolled my eyes. "Jewels, you say?"

"Don't get any ideas."

Outside, a reporter was standing in front of the entrance, talking through a microphone as a cameraman focused on me and Ryotsu. "We're live in front of the Bob Carr Hall which has become a scene of complete chaos!"

He turned to me and Ryotsu and pointed the microphone at me specifically. My guess is that he saw Ryotsu go in earlier, or someone told him about it. "Miss!" he said suddenly as he turned. "You are the sole survivor of this horrible ordeal, CORRECT?"

In unison, Ryotsu and I asked, "'Sole?' Didn't you see the fleeing crowd and armored idiots?"

"Until now, this creature theory has been dismissed as the works of the Ortarega Mafia, who are infamous for disposing of bodies in seemingly undetectable locations… Sir, have you asked your understudy, if she is that, about how she feels about all this?"

"No, and I have no plans to!" Ryotsu said in his and possibly my defense.

"Please… just… leave me alone for right now…" My head was still reeling from what had happened, as I wanted to deny it myself.

"This incident," he continued, "Happened to take place on… New Year's Eve, of all nights! I would like to represent the citizens of the city and interview you exclusively-"

Without warning, somebody punched the reporter in the middle of his sentence, knocking him to the ground. Ryotsu ran to the defenseless man and began to kick him with his wooden sandals as he curled up to defend himself. "Are you people CRAZY?" he exclaimed amongst the assault. "Jim! Are you getting all this?"

"Scram, buddy!"

I instantly recognized the puncher. "Daniel…"

"Heh… sorry I'm late, Aya. What'd he do this time?"

"Rockets," I answered, wanting to get out of the situation.

In Daniel's car, the scenery sped by as I looked out the window. I didn't pay much attention to the sidewalks and buildings we passed, because I was spacing out from faint remembrance. What I was remembering, though, escaped me. I sat in front with Daniel while Ryotsu sat in back, playing a handheld game that he had acquired in the wake of one of his money schemes that he frequently concocts both on and off-duty. "Aya, you OK?" Daniel asked. "That was really SOMETHING that happened back there… Heard from a cop that your boyfriend ran outta there like a wuss! Haha!"

"Uh, he wasn't one of the actors," Ryotsu said, not looking up from his game. "I saw that he was involuntarily floated out of the theatre!"

"Oh man! That's even better! Er… sorry your date didn't go well, ahem…"

"It's not like that!" I said to Daniel. "I had him escort me 'cuz he kept pestering me for a date."

In hindsight, repeatedly calling him a 'colleague' further up in this "chapter" wasn't such a good idea. "Yeah, but of all places, a PLAY?" Daniel continued, "With the Rooster Teeth guys? There's a story! Ha! So why that play, huh? Is that the 'In' thing now?"

"Saw the ad on this site I go to on my off days. I dunno… just caught my eye. I never expected them to do a play off of it, with such good props, too. I actually thought they were going to set off a bomb and destroy the stage multiple times."

"Don't tell me you were secretly on these cases!" he said.

"Heh, that's some cop instinct I got into her!" Ryotsu bragged.

I just turned to look out the window again. "..Instinct…? Daniel, shouldn't you be with your son? It's New Year's Eve…"

He just shrugged and said, "He knows his dad's a cop. My boy understands."

"Anyway, I heard things from people running out," Ryotsu interrupted. "Must have been a hell of an incident, huh?"

"Sort of… the creatures looked… vaguely familiar. It's my first time seeing them live, but I feel like I've seen them before…"

"We have pictures up at the precinct."

"Those are vague in of themselves. That's probably why. Your fault, too," I retorted.

"Sheesh, you're pretty harsh to your 'sensei,' aren't you?" Daniel asked.

"I'm used to it," Ryotsu said. "I don't have much of a reason to care."

I closed my eyes and slept the rest of the ride. I was tired, I still hurt in a few places, and it wasn't the pictures I was remembering, so I thought…

* * *

"Aya!"

"What! I'm up, I'm up…"

I had fallen asleep at somebody's desk, unfortunately. I was still tired from the previous night, and just thinking of what I had inadvertedly had myself drawn into sapped more of my energy. I looked up to see the face of fellow officer Reiko Katherine Akimoto, a half-French, half-Japanese woman considered to be second-most attractive next to myself, though physically stronger and faster. "You really should have stayed home to rest, Aya," she said.

Daniel was also there, saying, "That's what I told her."

"Sorry, everybody, but I'm the only one who knows what really attacked last night," I said.

"We've been getting more missing persons and murder reports," Daniel said, holding up such reports in one hand. "Thing is about the murders, there's no body to report. Witnesses saw only some sort of jewel rising into the sky and some odd-looking creatures running away."

"Did some of them have claws or look like ants?"

"You bet!"

Ryotsu had to choose that moment to burst into the precinct with a camera in his hands. He kicked up several papers on his way through and even knocked over a couple of people, one of which protested angrily from the floor. "I managed to get some decent shots this time! NOW who takes vague pictures, hm?"

On the digital display of his camera, I saw surprisingly clear shots of one of the ant-creatures, some of the claw creatures, and a new one of something resembling a trash can with spider legs and eyes popping up from under the lid. "So, we got any people supposedly linked to these things?" he asked.

"Nope, none," Daniel replied. "Also, Aya? Can you elaborate on this dissolution upon death stuff? What's that all about?"

"For some, it was instant," I recalled. "Others, they lingered a bit. I saw some outright survivors who took hits and still managed to escape. Ryotsu, did anybody fade away outside the theatre?"

He shook his head and fiddled with his camera, trying to find an uplink cable and a computer as I continued, occasionally bumping into me. Another officer present, Warner, said, "Oh, come on! What, is this supposed to be like ESP?"

"I don't think ESP would completely remove people's bodies from existence, down to their cells, if I read forensics reports correctly," Daniel said.

I nodded in assent. Warner didn't seem like he was buying it, since he turned his head down and rubbed his neck. "People themselves aren't just up and vanishing," Reiko said, "But that still doesn't explain what we can do with these creatures in the long run. For right now, Aya's our only witness, though."

"True. Other than her statement and Ryo's current photos, we can't get any real information about these things."

There was an enormous crash behind Daniel, but no one really jumped, mostly because it didn't sound like anything major was broken in the process. It was more of the sound of an assortment of papers and their boxes falling on someone, and that someone was also why no one was really surprised. Ryotsu had managed to knock down two stacks of papers in his search for one of the department's new photo printers or someone's computer hooked up to a printer, the new mess adding to the existing papers on the floor. Papers managed to slide and float their way all the way down to me, putting Daniel knee-deep in old reports, cold cases or even otherwise. One folder closest to me caught my eye, and I knelt down to pick it up, a picture falling out as I did. Without really looking at it, I put it back in the folder, under a paperclip, like one on the other side of it. I skimmed the contents of the reports as those present pitched in to pick up the fallen papers, boxes and folders strewn throughout the area.

Apparently, two high school students disappeared following a murder-suicide incident. The amount of time between the events was incredibly small, as the two were reported missing not even the next morning, as the shooting was in the evening. It also seemed that the creatures began to intensify their attacks in the areas where the two lived, as well as the city overall. _All these reports in just somewhere under a year…_ I thought. _Theoretically, if these two never went missing, we wouldn't be having these problems?_

By myself, I drove down to the apartment complex where one of the missing students lives (or, lived, depending on his status). It was one of the offshoots of the Camden complexes, this one being Renaissance, with large trees both temperate grown and some palm trees thrown in near the buildings themselves. I walked into the front office after parking my car outside of the gates (not directly outside), folder in hand, intent on finding out everything I could about the student's family. After explaining the situation to an employee, the gate was open for me to pass through in my car. Oddly enough, I had read bad reviews online about this place as far as living. With scenery like this and nice tree shading, how could it get such reviews?

I eventually got to the right building, 825, with the target apartment being 203 on the second floor. In the parking lot in front, under and next to a large tree, I took the time to examine the reports further. The student I was currently getting information about had no real known reason to run away, and he had a mind to stay away from suspicious figures. He did have a relationship with a girl, though she had a reason to run away from home, which in turn, could have led to this boy running, according to the report.

In front of the door itself, I felt a little nervous for some reason. Perhaps it was just me feeling a bad about confronting a family who had lost their eldest son possibly to monsters, but I can't really remember now. All I can really remember was the shock I got when I went to knock on the door as it opened. For a split second, I thought I saw a tall young man with brown hair, a tight-fitting shirt and something like samurai hakama (pants, for those of you curious). After that brief moment, there was a shorter blindfolded boy with silver hair and black robes. Quickly, I stepped back and pulled out my sidearm, a P Walther 99 as opposed to my gun from the night before. "MPD! Who are you?" I ordered.

He didn't seem at all surprised or startled. The only mode of easy expression he had available was his mouth, and it wasn't showing any signs of surprise, even when I pointed my gun at him. "I said, who are you?" I shouted again.

"Dunno," he answered. "If you came here to ask the family about something, forget it. A week after their son went missing, they left this world. And no, they aren't dead."

"What are you talking about? Leaving this world? What, were they aliens?"

"No. I can't say much else."

Looking behind him, it seemed like the apartment was lived in. It didn't seem to fit the boy, though, as the pictures I could see didn't seem to have him in there at all. "And before you ask," he continued. "I just came here to tell you."

"How can I trust you? Do you live here?" I asked.

"No. I don't live here. And trusting me is a pretty good idea if you've fought with the Heartless, those things that attacked the theatre last night."

"You know an awful a lot about what's going on here…"

Just like that, he ignored me and walked right past, as if though I wasn't there. Needless to say, I still had a lot of questions, like why he called the creatures Heartless as such, how he even got into the apartment and how he seemed like he was able to see under that blindfold. I tried to follow him down the stairs after shutting the door to the apartment, but he was nowhere to be seen. He just seemed to up and vanish into thin air without a trace. Thinking about it, I hadn't come into physical contact with him, so I thought that I was suffering from a delayed reaction to a delusion-inducing poison from the claws of the creatures. With that in mind, I called Ryotsu, who was still back at the precinct. "Hey… Ryo-san," I said over the phone as I sat on the stone steps of the apartment building.

"What? Did you find something?" he asked.

"No… nothing really helpful, really. I think I'm losing it for some reason, because I think I saw some kid in black robes pass by…"

* * *

"You know, beyond your expression, you look okay," Daniel said.

Most of the clutter, old and new, had already been picked up, so the floor was no longer a slipping hazard where I was standing. Still, I was beginning to feel that something much bigger was going to be coming our way. I explained everything I knew so far to the others, about the creature activity patterns profiled in the dossier I brought with me, and looked in databanks for more clues. So far, nothing new popped up in any form, leaving the precinct stuck. "Are you sure you don't want to go home?" Reiko asked.

I nodded my head as I took another look at the dossier's contents for anything I overlooked. "Hey… look up murder and suicide cases within the last year, and exclude those involving the creatures," I said.

Within a few minutes, Daniel had brought up a list of cases filed under murder-suicide, which was a lot larger than I expected. I scrolled through myself, trying to find the date closest to when the teenagers went missing. Soon, it popped up on the screen as I rolled my cursor over it. "Okay… perp was a Robert Hopewell… no known substance abuse, or episodes of mental breakdown. Wife wasn't seen with other men or even women," I read aloud. "So much for reasonable motivation."

"Wait, did you say Hopewell?" Ryotsu said, looking up from a rat he managed to catch by the tail. "As in, THE Hopewells?"

"Until last calendar year, they were at the top of their game and then some!" Daniel added. "A big business in the schoolbook division on the dad's side with the mom's side working with Washington D.C. from home! Word is, some righteous pomp sued their asses clean off the face of this Earth for no known reason, so the bank was hounding them… right up until the murder-suicide."

"What people won't do these days," I said, sitting back. "What anyone or anything won't do…"

* * *

I didn't know it then, but from that day, things started to get hectic. The situation would deteriorate into a nightmare that people would want to forget.

The thing is, Ryotsu and I are only players. We got involved in someone else's game, something far beyond the scope of what we originally encountered. All of this linked to two missing persons cases. Those two…

From my understanding, they were using new lives to reclaim their old ones.

* * *

[Author's Notes]

- Good… fuck. I hate writing like this. I am never, ever, doing this sort of thing for a long time again. When writing from the perspective of a character I created, it's all good, but with this sort of material, I feared going OOC.

- Don't be fooled by the KochiKame content! This chapter's world is much more serious than it's associated JUMP property makes it look!

- Next chapter is pretty tame in many respects: Slow Starting. It's one of those cutscene deals, so brace yourself for long dialouges.


	7. Slow Starting

They say that when someone elsewhere is talking about you, you sneeze. Others say that your ears start to heat up. Either theory could be plausible, because Roman was experiencing both. Not only did it feel like his ears were on fire, but he was sneezing up a storm, minus mucus. "Son of a—ACHOO! Bitch," he said as he passed Zexion, who was reading a book before Roman's sneeze flipped over about a dozen pages ahead of where he was.

Roman wasn't interested in any missions this day, so he didn't bother with his robes. He sauntered into the Grey Area wearing dark green t-shirt reading UNSC near the top with a military logo underneath, dark blue sweatpants (temperature still varies with time in The World That Never Was), and a manga in his hand. His walk was interrupted by another sneeze which Eve to his left didn't even react to, somehow. She was too absorbed in a book she had picked out from the library to even notice him coming in to begin with. Soon after Roman walked in and took a seat in one of the various chairs, Roxas followed, looking slightly downtrodden. "Whoa, dude," Roman said. "You're on your way to lookin' like hell."

"Dreams," Roxas stated. "Bloody dreams. Literally."

"I'm... not sure I wanna know."

Roman thought back to one of his own dreams, his most recent, which was one reason why he didn't want to hear any of Roxas's details. In the dream, Roman was back in the library of the Castle, a vaguely familiar scene as he observed. Things changed, he knew, when he saw the body near the wall. When he walked to it, he wasn't able to get a good look at the face, or any defining features: just black clothing and hints of blonde hair. Nothing else. If anything, he was unable to remember what the clothing even looked like.

He snapped back into reality when he saw that Xion had walked in, looking slightly paler than usual, though it wasn't that Roman ever considered her pale at all under normal circumstances. Her left elbow rested in the cup of her right hand as she walked in, looking a little unsure of herself as she walked past a Dusk on its way out. Roman always took negative expressions on female faces as some sort of bad news for someone or something, so he tried to make himself as inconspicuous as he could by pretending to read a free newspaper the man in red handed to him personally. "I think you'll need it," he commented. "I've seen you two."

Roman just rolled his eyes and opened the paper to the entertainment section as Xion simply stood by one of the chairs on the opposite side of the Area and looking at her right hand as if though it was about to betray her. Eve looked at her with confusion, wondering why Xion was acting like she was. _A lost soul? No, that's ridiculous, _Eve thought. _Perhaps she found something out, or…_

"You can put the paper down, Roman," Xion said aloud, startling the intended recipient. "I'm not in the mood, and I'm not really ticked by you… I don't know how to feel, actually."

The boys shot each other confused looks, wondering what Xion was talking about. "So… am I supposed to be relieved, or emotionally disturbed if I had a heart?" Roman replied, sounding more teasing than he intended.

Xion's only reply was a shrug. "That was a bit of an over-exaggeration," Eve noted.

"That's me."

* * *

From what Roman could recall, breezes weren't uncommon in Twilight Town. The thing that was most shocking about this day was the temperature, and how it went right through him when the winds blew. Having flip flops, no socks and no jacket or coat of any kind certainly didn't help his case. "Taking a walk should NOT be this uncomfortable!" he remarked to himself. "Thank God those service tunnels are heated."

He wasn't planning on entering them: he was just standing at the entrance of one of them, letting the warm currents stave off the cold from the winds. He was surprised that they could even do that with service tunnels, though one good theory would be contained heat from the summer months. "What month is it right now? I forgot. Maybe I should get back to the castle before Saix thinks I've ran off. I forgot to leave a note, and I don't think he passes Roxas often. Or Xion, for that matter."

The entrance to the dark corridor this time was located conveniently near his present location, in an abandoned lot of sorts, where people had tossed out myriads of odds, ends and other junk. Roman could be thankful that it miraculously didn't smell in there, for all the trash was usually old computer parts or parts from some random machine he couldn't make heads or tails of. It was just a few short moments from where he was standing, so he went forth with a lazy, swaggering gait that he saw in an anime he had seen, thanks to a computer back in his quarters. Unfortunately, his lack of balance decided to take the opportunity to make him fall on his side rather painfully. "Yeah, bad idea."

Nothing had been moved from what he could see. The same hunks of garbage with impaled circuit boards and other large machines or machine components. As far as the circuit boards went, he could visualize them being stabbed with screwdrivers for some odd reason in the back of his mind. As he stepped past one hunk of trash, the winds blew through once more, chilling the boy to the bone right through his shirt and numbing his feet. "Oh, fffffff-"

He was stopped in his tracks directly in front of the corridor as someone came in front of him from within…

* * *

The way Roman held himself struck Eve as rather unusual, shoulders scrunched up and arms close to his sides. She could barely see him shivering a bit, as well. Any further than a mere foot away, and she wouldn't have noticed. "Uh…" he uttered. "Is he pissed?"

Eve opened her mouth to answer, but stopped. With that face of his, there was no real way to know what expression Saix actually had, a fact made only worse by being a Nobody. On another note, Eve couldn't really truly identify "being pissed," from anger. She figured that one was more over the top, but… "I… will take that as a big, fat 'IDK,'" he said as he maneuvered around her and into the swirling portal of darkness.

"That… that's true," she said aloud, with no one to hear it.

Eve was more prepared for the cold winds, as she had the initiative to bring the coat part of the Organization robes. It didn't go right through her as it seemed to do Roman, but she still shivered at the blistering breeze. It wasn't a moment too soon for her to follow her peer into the dark corridor, which remained temperature neutral. In this sense, it feels warm to those coming from the cold, and cool to those coming in from the heat.

The swirling realm of black and dark purples mixed with other dark colors still fascinated Eve every time. How exactly did this realm come to existence? How did it come to be used in its current form? There was no such material on it, much to her disappointment. Promptly, she followed the portals of light within, taking a look at some to see that various representations of the worlds they led to. One was a lone island with what looked like various machines suspended above it. Another was represented by faces carved into a mountain in a fashion not too distant of a "Mount Rushmore" some worlds had. One in particular caught her attention, which was a sideways strawberry with a miniature American football field on it. A side facing her read the words "Devil Bats."

She ignored the odd image in the passing portal and headed to the image of an amalgation of gray towers, the image of the Castle That Never Was. Out of all the portals with images within, this one was the clearest. This made it easy to discern from some others she had seen, in which one would practically be on the verge of falling through in order for them to make out what it was they were looking at. It was also peculiar that, portals she had been in had more vivid images than when she first saw them. Did others see the portals the same way?

* * *

"Brr… it's the wind chill that gets ya," Roman commented to himself.

By now, he had the mind to change from flip-flops to actual socks and shoes, as well as procure the coat part of his robes. While the appearance of a black coat contrasted a bit oddly with blue jeans, it wasn't like he planned on keeping the look all day. He was just trying to warm up on his way to the Mission Simulator. Despite the name, members with the requisite technical expertise can make their own custom missions, mainly designed to further test abilities. Obviously, such a feat was way over Roman's head, so he went ahead and picked out one of the missions completed by him in real time. "Okay, let's see…" he said. "Hm… Maybe I can go back and kick that Allen kid's ass. Or maybe… wait."

He stopped and thought for a moment. _What should I do?_ He asked himself. _Maybe somewhere warm? Nah, because that first mission there was timed. That, and there were giant robots. So it boils down to this: risk it to see the giant robots? Or not bother, because this simulator does get pretty lethal._

"Excuse me."

Roman jumped slightly at the unexpected voice, accidently causing mission options to fly by on the console. He turned to find Eve looking at him, having taken the coat off, leaving her usual black dress. "Okay… please make your arrival known. I don't take kindly to stuff I don't see coming," he said.

"…I'm sorry," she replied, bowing her head down slightly. "I was told to come here for one of the training programs, so—"

"Is it a custom?"

Eve blinked. "What, did someone come up to you, or was there a piece of paper?" Roman asked.

"A paper on my door. It should be one of the programs…"

"Then I would automatically assume it's a custom. Did it say who it was from?"

"No. It said that it would help me hone my powers further."

"Then that doesn't spell good things," he finished, stopping the mission list with two fingers. "I mean, for all either of us know, Vexen left that. Then again, he's leaving you alone for this one so… I'm reading a bit too much into this, aren't I?"

Eve looked at the mission he happened to highlight with his fingers. Unlike the other missions, which had pictures of various areas somewhere, this one seemed to have only a wireframe where the portrait was supposed to be. "That one," she said.

He took his fingers off the display to take a closer look at what it was she was looking at. "Oh… what, no fancy backgrounds prepared?" he said. "Well, whatever works. Okay, 'Limit Form Basics'…" Just looking at those three words seemed to baffle him, as his only reply aside from a brief darting of eyes was, "What?"

Tapping the glowing graphic with his thumb, he brought up the mission's details on the screen on the wall of the room. Unfortunately, the contents of it, not so much the language, were far beyond the two Nobodies. "Okay, seriously," Roman commented. "What? I hope to God it clarifies when someone gets in there."

"Wait a second," Eve said. After scanning the mission title and description, she added, "I think this is it. I remember seeing the title on the paper."

"Hey, if this is where you get off, fine by me," Roman said, raising his hands up in dismissal. "I just wandered in here to redo a mission somewhere warm, thus explaining my debatable wardrobe malfunction."

On that note, he pressed the confirm button on the lower screen, opening the doors into the Holo-Simulator. Instead of a bright light as is the norm for most missions redone in the simulator, there was somewhat of a dull blue glow on the surfaces of the room. Looking inside, Roman saw that the glow was caused by the neon gridlines of the actual simulator itself. "Well, this is new to me. Must be its default form," he commented. "And thank God, I do believe I'm feeling climate control!"

Upon walking in, Roman saw fit to leave his coat on one of the consoles. One thing he could be thankful for was the fact that the touch controls responded only to actual humanoid contact. He leaned against the wall next to the entryway, seeming content with just watching. Eve walked forward to a glowing square on the ground, which was a white glow as opposed to the blue of the gridlines. _This must officially start the program,_ she thought.

Gently, she placed one foot on the glowing square. Nothing happened. She tried stepping a few times on the square with the same foot, but that didn't do much, either. From there, she figured that she needed both feet within the square, and that worked, for a pulse of blue light washed over the chamber and climbed up the walls. "And this is where things start to get weird, I bet," Roman commented from behind her.

* * *

"HYAAAAA! Save me!"

It was quickly becoming clear that Kagura didn't like whatever it was that had rang the doorbell. "Health! Health me!" she screamed as she flew across the living/TV room above her soundly sleeping dog.

"It's 'help me,' got it? You're annoying," Gintoki said, not looking up from what he _thought_ was JUMP.

"T-T-There's an American at the door!" she shuddered from behind the usually unused reception desk.

He put down his "maybe JUMP" on the table, raising an eyebrow as he looked in the younger girl's direction. "Eh? An American?" he asked. "I'm pretty sure Americans are different from, like, Visigoths, whatever those are."

"I can't deal with them! They're too dirty! Shape up! Shape up now!"

He got up from his seat and started towards the recently-repaired front door to the Yorozuya complex, being careful as to not step on Sadaharu's tail. "It's 'help me,' got it? I swear, dealing with your mental deficiencies," he said on his way, referring to Kagura, "Is like living with friggin' cockroaches or being attacked by said Visigoths."

When he finally got to the door, he stopped to pick something out of his nose and flick it away before sliding the door open. "What's in your walle—"

* * *

Apparently, Roxas was the only one of the younger numbers to be going to other worlds for any reason. His reason today? When he and Roman were in Huffman Island, it occurred to the former that he managed to drop something, a detail he noticed earlier this morning. "I can't believe I managed to drop this there…" he muttered to himself. "I can hear him now. 'You managed to drop your head? Dude, that's messed UP.' Man, if I know what he's probably going to say before he says it, I don't think that's—"

As he passed the portal to what he believed was Amanto Edo, there was a high-pitched yet distinctly male scream. He jumped at the sound, nearly dropping his one remaining elixir on the ground. He shot a nervous glance at the portal, wondering what had happened to cause a scream so loud, it managed to travel through a portal…

* * *

"I'm back!"

There was no one in sight to greet Rinoa on her way in. She checked her clothing as she stepped in and took off her shoes; nothing unusual. It was her usual ensemble of blacks and blues, something no one made a bruise joke of to her relief. Still, there was Sadaharu sleeping peacefully on the ground, taking up a considerable amount of space. "Gin-san?" she called out. "Kagura? Anyone?"

She made her way to the receptionist's desk, passing an unfamiliar manga magazine on her way, hearing a sort of shuddering noise from behind. When she made her way to the front of it, Gintoki's head popped up from behind the desk, a look of fright on his face. "An American! One hell of an American!" he said.

Kagura's head popped up next, tears of fright running down her cheeks. "Pulp… pulp fiction!" she cried.

"It's 'help me,' got it?"

The elder girl was confused. "American? Is that who I saw on—or rather, in—the ground outside?" She turned and started to walk out of the complex, saying, "Kagura-chan, I think that you need to stop playing with the neighborhood boys for a couple days…"

"Oi oi oi oi oi! Whaddya think you're doing?" Gintoki said.

Rinoa was getting her shoes back on as she turned and said, "I'm going to help that person out there. I can't believe you two are so brutish towards some people!"

"W-Wait! Don't do it!" Kagura cried. "Naomi Misora! You can't die like Raye did!"

"What the hell are you rambling on about!" Gintoki said as he smacked her over the head with a slipper. "And by the way, she committed suicide!"

By the time Rinoa had gotten to the scene, the landlady of the Yorozuya complex, Otose, was making a scene. "What is it with you idiots and messes! Is it getting so bad that you're littering using corpses!"

Running out to the porch, the former samurai retorted, "Oh yeah? Well, take a look at that clothing! American if I ever saw it!"

"What, is your hair starting to make you retarded? Last time I checked, America's a nice country, even if it is a bit rustic!"

The argument raged on as Rinoa crouched down besides the stranger, who was now trying to get his head out of the ground. He wore clothing Rinoa identified as cowboy garb, and his hat was on the ground beside him, along with a pair of glasses. "Are you okay…?" she asked him.

His only reply was muffled yelling as he continued pulling. Apparently, he wasn't getting very far. "Hold on just a second!"

She grabbed his midriff and started pulling in unison with him, making sure not to be in a position where she could accidently suplex him when he got out. Considering how hard it was to get him out, there is no way he ended up in his situation simply from falling. Still, he was able to pop his head out of the ground to reveal a short haired teenager, perhaps no older or younger than Rinoa. His hair was some form of brown or black that appeared to be a really dark purple, and his eyes were a milk chocolate brown, like many native Japanese… save for Gintoki. "Are you okay? Sorry if my co-workers gave you a hard time…" Rinoa said.

"Nah, it's alright," the boy said. "By the way, did you say, 'co-workers?'"

"Hey, why did you save that guy? Why?" Gintoki shouted from above.

Rinoa only let out a soft sigh.

* * *

Weekends usually tended to be wild cards as far as attendance for Caffe Cait Sith. Some weeks, they were more packed than weekdays. Others, the place was so empty, one would think they were closed if they hadn't seen Annette behind the counter.

Since opening the café, she had made it her business to supply sweepers with useful information and maybe even a few bulletins. After all, she used to be in the business, herself. She knew well what sweepers can do, but as far as WHO sweeps changed dramatically over time. Case in point, Zidane Tribal. "Hey, we're not open yet," Annette said, hearing the bell at the door clang.

"Aagh, but I can't wait five more minutes… I'm starving!"

The boy walked into the shop clutching at his stomach, his tail dragging behind him. In all her years, Annette had never seen anyone with an actual tail before, and she'd seen plenty of odd sweepers before. He plopped himself at one of the bar seats and let his face smack into the bar itself, letting out another groan that couldn't really be distinguished from his stomach. "That jerk…" he moaned, lifting his head off the counter. "Why'd he have to leave me like that!"

"Kid, if the rumors are right, and you're a thief-type of guy, Train's probably keeping an eye on his stuff. Same goes for Sven, too," Annette replied without turning her back from the dish racks.

"They could have at least left me a little money for food…"

"By the way, I thought you were the kind of kid who had a decent gamut of friends, so you gotta wonder if they'll help you out," Annette mentioned. "What were they, again? Tanta-something? Taito?"

"Tantalus," Zidane said.

"Right. Whatever happened to them? Did you tick them off and you got booted?"

"Nah… we kinda got scattered after a little incident in the Drassil providence…"

The woman raised an eyebrow at the name. "That wouldn't have involved a gal at that one convention, would it?"

"Hey, how was I supposed to know she 'wasn't on my team'? I've never heard a girl say something like that!"

He let his head slam back down on the counter as his stomach growled again. "I really don't want to talk about it right now," his muffled speech roughly translated to. "Want food…"

The former sweeper just let out a sigh before the bell at the door rang again. "Before you get any ideas, I'm just letting the kid stick around for shelter," she said to the entrees.

"Food and shelter," Zidane corrected, moving his head so that his face was no longer plastered against the counter.

"Don't be so harsh, Annette!"

Train Heartnet and Sven Vollfied were regulars to Cait Sith, often rolling in for food and information on new targets available to sweepers. Train himself was easily recognizable by now, and not for his odd taste in clothing. "Long time, no see, all!" he announced loudly to the near-empty café.

When Zidane heard that voice the second time, he bolted up to shoot a glare in Train's direction. As per his usual behavior, he did his best to look innocent, and it was rather convincing to Annette. Zidane, not so much. "And by the way, buddy," Train said as he took a seat one space apart from Zidane. "I can't have you stealing this. It's one-of-a-kind, so it's not like I can go out and buy another one. On top of that, I wouldn't have enough money to begin with!"

"Now why would I steal that?" the boy retorted. "If you're really this so-called 'Black Cat', and that gun is a dead giveaway to who you are, stealing it would just paint a big bull's-eye on myself! Not to mention this…" he added, picking up his slightly swishing tail.

"The kid's got a point," Annette said. "Being the Black Cat must be something else, having who-knows-who coming after you for whatever reason. On top of that, you got Chronos after you, so I've heard."

"The what?"

There was a long, awkward silence with Train staring at Zidane for most of it. "Zidane," he said. "How long have you known me?"

"Hey, you and Sven were the guys who pulled me out of that jam in Drassil a while back, so that means we've known each other for a while now. Why?"

Annette let out a sigh and put down the plate she was drying off. "Kid, if you're a sweeper, then you should know a little something regarding the Black Cat, AKA, Train here," she said. "If you don't, I don't wanna know the rock your little theatrical group was lugging around to hide under. "

"Well, I know he was a top-notch assassin, and that he quit sweeping after… something," he said. "Beyond a lot of that, I really don't have much."

"Aah, just let him learn on the job!" Train interrupted, smacking Zidane on the back in a friendly manner. "By the way, since we started this conversation, the shop's officially open! How about some rice balls with salmon?"

"Of course," Annette said. "Who else would interrupt a conversation about your own past to order rice balls at my shop?"

"Can I get some Grade-A steaks if you have 'em?" Zidane piped up.

"Jeez, you two…"

* * *

The weapons lost their forms and began to melt back into Eve's complexity. She herself was surprised at how painless it was, though she still felt the sensation of skin returning to normal. She was even more surprised considering just what it was she went through, actually using her so-called "defect" to deadly effect. "You know, given what I just saw…" Roman called out. "I think I would have been safer in the control room."

He had ducked down to the floor on his stomach to avoid various Heartless unintentionally thrown his way by the graceful, lethal attacks launched by Eve, using her newly christened "Nano Overload." Not only that, but there were sparks of lightning that shot out every now and then, which didn't help things much. She herself looked around at the chamber, which was slowly regenerating itself, but still showed battle scars whether they had been from Heartless hitting the walls or floor, or slash marks from her transformed weapons. "Maybe," she said.

"So, uh, if this program's done and over with, let's get out of here before somebody rolls in and thinks that we trashed the place."

He dusted himself off with his hands and started towards the now-open doorway into the control room of the Holo-Simulator. Eve was quick to follow, rubbing her arm to soothe the odd aching sensation she felt.

* * *

[Journal Entry]

Ho. Ly. Hell.

Women are becoming friggin' DEADLY these days! I kinda figured as much seeing Larxene and Xion, but Eve puts together her attacks with an appropriate sort of elegance. Therefore, I say it's some scary shit, moreso if I were a Heartless. I mean, even with this—I dunno—mass of weapons coming out of her arms and making spears come out her back, she makes it look good! But then… there's than odd, usually unreadable expression on her face. I guess that's me forgetting who we are, but at times, we act fairly close to human. So much so, why doesn't anyone else forget?

By the way, before I forget, I managed to find some manila folder on one of the simulator consoles. What's written in there is… odd, to say the least. Still, I figure I better keep it, and hope the original owner doesn't come after me (hopefully no one I know) before I can get a chance to return it, somehow.

* * *

[Author's Notes]

- Here's an equation for you: Lazy bum samurai + chenogasm + otaku + FFVIII = pwned Marluxia? Find out in "Raging White Demon!"

- About the section up there taking place in Sweeper's Field: I had to come up with a reason why Zidane was travelling alone, which I failed to note out when I first introduced him. I figured, when I wrote this, revealing it now would add some humor to the scene.

- About the section in Amanto Edo: The late Edo period IS sometime within the age of the classic American west. Also, I can't help but wonder why the Amanto never really bothered with the rest of the world, but I guess that's what Sorachi is currently working on. Thus explains why the neighborhood boys see Americans as rustic and shit, which in turn explains Kagura's reaction to the someone at the door.


End file.
